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Memory Sketches 



^^o S. H. 

Whoat hands am folSeS loni in trusi. 
Where crosses hlossom out of dust 



Memory Sketches 



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P*>J? 'Carroll, C. S. C. 

Author of 
* 'Round About Home," "Songs of Creelabeg," Etc. 




School Plays Publishing Company 

South Bend. Indiana 







\ 



^ 



COPYRIGHTED, 1920 

P. J. Carroll, C. S. C. 

SOUTH BBND, IND. 



APR ib 1920 



©C}.A565560 



J- 



INDEX 

The Old Order Changeth Page 9 

He Comes to Us Page 16 

The Meechers Page 23 

Jim Regan's First Communion Page 32 

The Stranger Page 38 

Choosing the People Page 47 

The Holy Fathers Page 55 

Dolores Page 61 

A Glimpse of the Sea Page 68 

Bogara Feh Page 76 

The White Wake Page 84 

The Martyrs Page 91 

The Going of Tom Connelly Page 98 

Knockanare by the Sea Page 105 

The League House Page 115 

The Brave Deserves the Fair Page 123 

The Concert ..Page 132 

The Bard of Ardagh Page 139 

Miser's Heap Page 152 

The Luck of Micky Mack Page 159 

The Ghost Page 167 

Kate Page 173 

The Last Page Page 181 



FOREWORD 

THESE bits of life, picked up from the morning, are 
brief, simple memories. They are recorded now, in 
the hope that the men and women of the race may 
catch from them the joy of recognition. For it has come 
to me they will see in my Father John, a Father John 
of their own; in the Deel gliding past Athery and Creel- 
abeg, a Deel making music elsewhere; in the hedge, the 
garden, the bogfield of my small world, a hedge, a gar- 
den, a bogfield in the world where their young lives were 
lived. 

I cannot tell you all the quiet comfort that has come 
to me following the unrecorded paths of our dear priest. 
That he is worthy a more ambitious chronicle, I well 
know; and that his unforgettable goodness did not ap- 
pear to one of more temperament and seeing will always 
seem to me a loss. 

These bits, however, are given out of the unwritten, 
larger life of the man in the trust that they may edify 
and please. There is no attempt at analysis, no trying 
to present spiritual seeing and inwardness. Just what 
a country lad saw and heard as from afar. 

God rest Father John! He had the mind of a poet 
and the heart of a soggarth. 



THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 

TWAS a March morning when Father McCarthy 
said his good-by to Creelabeg. The bare oak 
hmbs out in the chapel yard wailed dismally when 
caught by the wind-gusts that blew down from Ballya- 
dan hills. Gray Ballyadan, hiding the vision of the flat 
farms to the west! The rain came in intermittent show- 
ers and beat on the large chapel windows like the crack 
of musketry. It was cold weather indeed. The cows stood 
close to the stone ditches, their backs thrust up against 
the wind; the sheep were huddled together In corners 
surveying with meek eyes the deserted fields; crows with 
motionless wings skidded down the wind, and cawed de- 
fiantly. It was just the time for a funeral or a leave- 
taking. A gray day Is for gray thoughts. 

Well, Father McCarthy was going at last. He had 
been in Creelabeg for six years, and we all began to 
think he would die there. Then, of a sudden, like a 
summer squall, we heard he was going, as all the others 
had gone, to a bigger and better parish. We were lone- 
some to be sure; but there had been so many changes 
in Creelabeg we were almost sorrow-proof, like profes- 
sional mourners at a wake. 

Father McCarthy was well over fifty when he re- 
ceived his promotion. He was a short, stout man who 
moved about with leisurely dignity, never mingling much 
with the people as his neighbor, Father Tracy of Knock- 
feen, used to do. He came at the Stations, when there 
was a sick call or a funeral, or of an odd time to bless 



10 Memory Sketches 

a house to which misfortunes came thick and fast; or 
maybe if there were visitations from someone departed. 
When he walked along the road on week days he never 
stood by the stone ditch to have a word at the headland 
with the plowman turning down the stubbles. He sa- 
luted you when you lifted your hat; If he knew you well, 
he might Inquire after the condition of someone sick at 
home; but beyond that he did not encourage conversation. 

Father McCarthy preached on Sundays at the two 
low Masses; and while not what Jim Donnelly would 
call a "powerful preacher," yet he said very refreshing 
and practical things. He seldom scolded; but he could 
send home an unpleasant truth with art and finality when 
there was occasion. Once when there was an unpleasant- 
ness between a few of the "boys" back at Grageen 
"cross," he said from the altar the next Sunday, "In 
praying for the uncivilized pagans of foreign parts let 
us not forget to recommend the Christians who acted 
like pagans back at Grageen during the week." 

Well, and so he was to say his farewell that March 
morning of wind and cold and pelting wet. How quiet 
the chapel was In the pauses of the wind ! The low tones 
of the priest himself as he pronounced the prayers of 
the Mass, and the occasional cough of the kneeling wor- 
shipers only emphasized the stillness between the wind- 
gusts and the rapping of the rain. Then, after the Gos- 
pel, he turned to his people to say his good-by. Such 
sweet, mellow words he said, the memory of them still 
keeps at Creelabeg! The men fingered their hats; the 
women wept softly as they always do in Ireland when 
the priest is going away. 

"Faith," observed Mrs. Noonan, as she walked home 
after the last Mass, "Father McCarthy had a great heart 



The Old Order Changeth 11 

an' a feelln' for the poor, for all that he was distant in 
his way." 

"Ay so; 'deed he had, 'deed he had. An' whin you 
would be sick he was kind and considerate." 

Mrs. Buckley — Jammle's wife at the east side of Dan- 
ahar road — made herself more snug under her gray shawl 
after this brief eulogy. 

''He's goin' to a big place anyway," called Johnny 
Mangan, as he passed by the women, his head bent low 
against the gale. 

''So they say, Johnny; so they say," observed Mrs. 
Noonan from behind her umbrella which she held direct 
toward the rain. "An' will he have a curate?" 

"Yerra, will he? An' will he have two — why don't 
you ask?" 

"But how could I ask, when I didn't think?" retorted 
Mrs. Noonan. 

"Of course you didn't think! Sure that's the trouble 
with everybody from Ballydehob to Drumagoo — they 
don't think. An' why don't they think? Because they 
don't, that's why." 

"Faith, Johnny," said Mrs. Buckley, "you walk like a 
counsellor or a mimber." 

"Ay," agreed Johnny, his heart lifted. 

"But you talk like a gommel," resumed Mrs. Buckley, 
completing her thought. 

Back at the chapel the people have all gone. The 
"clerk" has put away the vestments, covered the altar 
and locked the chapel door. In a little he leaves for his 
house and haggard at the back of Logan's bog a short 
distance to the north. 

Father McCarthy has finished his thanksgiving, has 
put away his soutane and stands at the sacristy door. 



12 Memory Sketches 

He hears the melancholy music of the leafless oaks swing- 
ing back and forth in the gale. He looks across the level 
country, where a few months before contented herds 
grazed leisurely, following each vein of sweet grass. 
Every field is now as barren of life and vegetation as a 
desert. The onward sweep of the army of clouds, the 
swinging trees, the rain, lashing roof and windows— -all 
serve to quicken the pensive mood. 

*'The weather,'' he mused, ''Is gray and fitful, with 
the sun never far In hiding. 'Tis the race— sombre, not 
sullen, tried by afflictions yet always watching for the 
sun In the heavens. The divine melancholy, the poet's 
heart-longing — they have it, if any people have it." 

Then he went back into the sacristy, surveyed the 
moist walls, the old vestment case, the fireplace with its 
empty grate and the lately painted wardrobe in which 
two albs and two surplices were hung from wire hooks. 

"Not a great church, not a great parish — as we meas- 
ure by time," he continued to reflect as he passed out 
from the sacristy to the tiled sanctuary. "But measured 
by eternity these quiet people Tm leaving, whose days 
pass in the calm of the valley or on the hill where the sun 
and wind come — measured by eternity they are as rich 
as the gold chests of Solomon." 

On his way home he stopped in to see Alice Magee 
who had the "decline" for now two years and would 
never walk on her feet again. 

"Poor Alice," they all said, "and she with voice in 
her as sweet as a thrush! And she with features that 
lovely she might be a daughter o' the princess o' 
the North." 

"And how are you today, Alice?" asked the priest 
seeing the white face through the gloom of the day. 



The Old Order Changeth 13 

"rm not suffering at all, Father, thank you," looking 
up wistfully at the priest. "But when the day does be 
dark and the wind wailing at the window I get lonesome 
for the sun and for a sight of the river Deel." 

"The sigh of the race, the sigh of the race!" mused 
the priest. Then to the girl: 

"Have no fear, child, have no fear. God is in the 
dark and in the light, in the storm and in the calm." 

"Ay, so you often tell me, Father. But sometimes 
I do be afraid. Especially today, and you going out of 
Creelabeg for always." 

"I'll not forget you, child, when Fm gone," answered 
the priest strangely touched. 

"And when Fm gone, I won't forget you, Father," 
she answered gently. She waited for a little and con- 
tinued. "Back at Laharona there's a place for me. 
Narrow it is and very small, but 'tis all FU want. Jackey 
Drew, who was back at Mary Hogan's funeral a week 
ago ere yesterday, says the ground is soft and the ivy 
ditch keeps the wind away." 

The girl had a spell of coughing, and her mother, a 
little woman with a patient face, moistened the lips of 
the sufferer. 

"Ay," answered the priest, "and up in Heaven your 
limbs will grow strong, and your breath will come easy 
and your heart will beat as angel harps. So don't trouble 
at all about the going, child — mine or yours. You're 
going a long way to be sure, but 'tis safe home at the 
end of the journey." 

**And, Father, 'tis very still at Laharona, for the ivy 
ditch keeps the wind away." 

"Ay so," answered the priest, "but Laharona is only 
the stopping place on the way to Heaven. 'Tis dark 



14 Memory Sketches 

outside today, and there's blue mist blowing In from the 
sea, and the wind runs down the hollow places. But don't 
mind, child. In Heaven there's light always shining from 
His face and calm over all His eternity." 

From its place on the wall above the mantleplece, the 
circular clock called off the hour of two, while a sudden 
wind gust made the close-fitting windows vibrate. 

"Good-by, Alice, child," said Father McCarthy as he 
prepared to go. ''Think of me up beyond when you're 
near Him." 

''Indeed I will. Father; but I'm thinking I'll have to 
wait for a bit in Purgatory, for I've a way of being cross 
at times." 

"Pray to her, child." 

"Our Lady?" 

"Ay. She'll put the blue mantle about you and take 
you home out of the dark. God bless you!" 

Once on the street. Father McCarthy was the same 
solemn, unbending man. He nodded to Tomeen Mad- 
Igan hurrying down the side-path to his home at the op- 
posite side of the river Deel. 

"Father McCarthy is like the sky," commented the 
same Tomeen to Mick Dannahar, the mill-man, when 
they met on the bridge. 

"An' why?" asked Mick. 

"An' why! Because why, he's cloudy — only the blue 
is behind the clouds." 

"I suppose It do be, Tomeen, but It don't often show," 
commented Mick with reflection. 

"No it don't, but 'tis there anyhow, so 'tis aequal." 

Well, Father McCarthy left us next day for the other 
side of the diocese. 'Twasn't a hundred miles off, to be 
sure, but 'twas out of the lives of the people of Creela- 



The Old Order Chang eth 15 

beg. He went to the little station In the black side-car 
we all knew so well. There was a goodly number of 
well-wishers down there to bid him a respectful good-by. 

To the north some miles out from Foynes we hear 
the screech of the engine as It comes. There Is commo- 
tion, and loud conversation between the station-master 
and the porter. The little train pulls In and stops while 
the engine pants like a living thing. Just at the carriage 
door, the priest turns around, lifts his tall hat and so 
bids good-by to those who have come to see him away. 
The men lift their hats, and the boys their caps; the 
women wave handkerchiefs and weep softly. The priest 
enters the carriage; the porter closes the door. The 
usual whistle of the guard to the engine-driver follows, 
and the train moves away. 

"WIsha God speed him where he's going!" ejaculates 
Mary Hogan. 

"He's a good man," modestly observes Jammie Lacey. 

''He Is; by gor he Is," agrees Tomeen Madlgan. ''He 
is a cloudy man, as we say, but the blue is always behind 
the clouds." 



II 

HE COMES TO US 

WELL, of all the days In the year, 'twas St. Pat- 
rick's day that Father Condon first said Mass 
In our chapel after Father McCarthy went away. 
And what a St. Patrick's morning It was too ! A calm, 
frosty air so that the breath of a man would be gray In 
front of him, the sun over everything, the Deel booming 
back at the dam, and the chapel bell ringing over all the 
parish. Now, Father Condon, who was always called 
"Father John" to distinguish him from his brother, 
"Father James," was a curate In the city before he came 
to us, and was known all over the county as a Land 
Leaguer. And what a man he was I Tall and eager 
with great eyes that looked at you as If with a light. 

He preached a sermon that first St. Patrick's day 
some lines of which still live over the years. "My dear 
brethren," he said, "this Ireland of St. Patrick Is not only 
a certain number of square miles of earth surrounded by 
the sea. It Is a love, a hope, a memory. Today, those 
beyond us In other continents, who have never seen this 
land of ours, but have heard of it from their fathers, are 
quickened with an affection as great as our own. Every 
hill white with the sun-blaze at noontime, every flat field 
where the herds wander In search of sweet grass, every 
lake reflecting sun and cloud, every river restless for the 
ocean is dear to the sons and daughters of our exiled 
brothers and sisters. 

"It is for us, my brethren, to keep alive through every 
change the love of country founded on Faith. With us 
16 



He Comes to Us 17 

religion and country have been held together by suffering. 
When our country was torn and bleeding, our Faith gave 
us comfort. Then let us, when our country is out of her 
bondage and can walk in clear places where there is light, 
not forget our Faith that sustained us in hours of dis- 
tress." 

On the way home from Mass there was great talk 
about the sermon. Jammie Hoban observed: 

"By gor, the new priest spakes well at any rate." 

**Yeh, does he? You may say he doesl" exclaimed 
Mike Ahern with some feeling. 

"He's a tall man, isn't he? An' hasn't he a voice as 
clear as the chapel bell of a frosty mornin'?" Jammie 
added. 

Well, the days came and went and every hour made a 
new friend for the priest. 'Twas "Father John" here 
and "Father John" there from one end of the parish to 
the other. He was a member of the hurling team In 
Blackrock in his day and gave the boys some hints about 
the game the Sunday before they played Killmedy for the 
West county championship ; he wrote short plays for the 
school-children which the nuns trained them to repro- 
duce; he had a dancing-master from Ardee to teach Irish 
dancing, and trained a chorus of boys and girls in the 
first and second stages of "sixth"; he was honorary pres- 
ident of the Land League and often had to make speeches 
at meetings. If a tenant couldn't settle for the rent, 'twas 
Father John who went to the landlord to secure a few 
months of grace; if there was a disagreement between a 
couple of neighbors about the boundary line between two 
pieces of land, 'twas the priest who came and argued 
them into settlement out of court. He was a born leader, 
and always led along the ways of peace. 



18 Memory Sketches 

"I'm a physical force man, Father John," protested 
a Limerick attorney while out from the city visiting the 
priest one afternoon. 

"And I'm anything — anything right — that will give 
Ireland her own." 

"Then why not arms? Why not an uprising? You 
priests are the leaders of the people. Why don't you use 
that power you have over them — us, I should say — swing 
us into line, start a rebellion and get Ireland what alone 
will satisfy her — absolute emancipation from England?" 

"It has been tried — that has been tried," mused the 
priest. 

"I tell you. Father John," persisted the attorney, 
"there never was a cause worth winning that hasn't been 
lost a hundred times before it was won at last. Dogged 
insistence, the insistence of the half-fanatic will win every 
time. What was '79? What was Emmet's attempt? 
What was '98? Not uprisings; — half-formed, ill-timed 
beginnings; expressions of the race's aspirations that 
wanted men of method and calm judgment to realize 
them. Father John, we're the greatest people that ever 
fought, and we'd have had Ireland for our own long ago 
if we had a calculating, painstaking, systematizing 
Yankee to lead us." 

"And yet which has secured us the most, the war of 
arms or the war of minds? Emmet or O'Connell? Grat- 
tan or Wolfe Tone? You speak of 'dogged insistence.' 
Precisely. It is because of 'dogged insistence,' the secur- 
ing this concession today and that other tomorrow, that 
we have received a measure of self-government now. 
Our fights with arms have been failures, because, some- 
how, as you say, we've always lacked system and gen- 
eralship. In the battle of minds we have had O'Connell 



He Comes to Us 19 

— resourceful, towering, Insistent. He had a million men 
at Tara. What a revolution he might have quickened 
Into blaze with the spark of his spoken word! But he 
knew himself, and better, he knew Ireland. He was no 
soldier, and Ireland was prostrate. So he did what he 
was best fitted to do, and for what we must ever hold 
his memory In large honor — he secured what he could 
from a parliament that gave grudgingly. When he did 
not receive all he asked for, he took what was given. His 
successes are not so spectacular as they are permanent. 
Yes, all said, O'Connell did more for Ireland than did 
any one man since St. Patrick. He Is the man who began 
the policy of self-government by Instalment. He loved 
Ireland, not as an Idealist, but as a practical politician." 

"However, what we want, Father John, Is an Ireland 
of Idealists, not an Ireland of politicians. When Ireland 
becomes a nest of office-seekers fighting for the coziest 
place, then the Ireland of poets and mystics will pass 
away." 

" 'In my Father's house there are many mansions,' " 
quoted the priest. ''Ireland today needs the man of vi- 
sion and wise administering, just as well as the saint and 
the maker of songs." 

When the sun was midway to the west, the priest ac- 
companied the young attorney to the train. On his return 
he met Kate Purcell, the apple-woman, driving her mouse- 
colored donkey from the market of Ardee. 

''How are the apples going, Kate?" he asked. 

"O faith, they'ren't goln' at all, your Reverence. 'TIs 
growing they are now, though very slow, for the spring 
is early yet." 

"Quite so. But I was thinking of the market." 

"Oh, the market. Well, there isn't much market to 



20 Memory Sketches 

speak of. You see, your Reverence, the old apples are 
nearly all gone and the new ones that do be comin* won't 
be come till the autumn." 

"And you like to sell apples?" asked the priest as he 
walked beside the slow-moving donkey. 

''I do, and I don't, your Reverence, dependin' on 
which way you take it. I like the apples, an' it sours the 
heart in me to sell thim. Whin I pick thim of a mornin*, 
they're wet with the dew an' rosy with young life, an* 
the smell o' thim is very sweet. An' whin I put thim away 
in the sacks each one seems to say to me, 'Good-by, Kate ; 
you'll take me with you to Ardee whin you're goin', but 
you'll come back without me.' An' all along the road the 
smell o' thim is about me an' I can't put the thought o' 
thim away. Thin whin a man comes into the market an' 
takes up my rosy apples an' feels the weight an' the soft- 
ness, an' says to me, 'How much?' my heart quickens an' 
the blood runs up to my face. An' so I say to him, 
maybe: 

" 'Is it to buy thim you want?' 

" 'Ay so ; an' I get thim chape.' 

" "Tis chape you want thim, is it? Faith I thought 
so the minit I saw you comin'.' 

" 'Well, I'm in a hurry. How much?' 

" 'They're a good apple,' I says to him seein' the way 
he handles a rosy one and bares the skin with his thumb- 
nail. 

" 'They're not any too good,' he tells me maybe, takin' 
up another fine fellow and holdin' him close to his nos- 
trils. 

" 'Wisha,' I say to him, 'the divil mind you' — God 
and your Reverence pardon me ! — 'an' 'tis a long time 
before you an' the likes o' you will be half as good.' 



He Comes to Us 21 

" 'Stop your prate,' he says, 'an' give me a price on 
your apples.' 

" 'I won't give you a price, nor half a price, nor quar- 
ter a price.' 

" *An' why won't you ?' he says. 

"'An' why won't I? Haven't you just spoken bad 
about my apples an' do you suppose 'tis to the likes o' 
you I'd sell thim after that?' 

" 'You're a strange woman,' says he, lookin' at me 
out o* his wonderin' eyes." 

"But Kate," observed the priest with some curiosity, 
"I don't see how you sell your apples if you treat all your 
customers that way." 

"But I don't, your Reverence. 'Tis only with thim 
as have no consideration for my dear apples that I refuse 
to have dalin's. When one comes an' handles thim ten- 
derly an' looks on thim with a kind eye, I part with thim 
willingly, keepin' a glad heart; for I say to myself they 
are goin' to a friend. But whin one comes as has no 
feelln' excep' at the inds o' his fingers, it runs agin my 
grain like I was sellin' a church to a Protestant, or as if 
a child o' mine was settin' sail for Australia." 

"Kate," half mused the priest, "you have the senti- 
ment of the race for the land and what the land gives." 

"I don't know at all about that. Father; but I like my 
apples that are as rosy as the sun when 'tis back near 
Boganora hills of an evenin'." 

At the crossing of the roads the ways of the priest 
and the apple-woman divided. 

"Well, Kate," quoted Father John, " 'I tak' the high 
road and you tak' the low.' " 

"Wisha God speed and keep your Reverence what- 



22 Memory Sketches 

ever road you go, though I hope it will always be up 
high where the sun an' the light is I" 

''And you too !" wished the priest. 

''O sure 'tis aqual about me. I'm a cratur as hasn't 
a soul dependin' on me. But sure we're all dependin' 
on you. So keep your health, an' don't expose yourself. 
For it takes only a draf to get a cowld upon a person, 
but it takes half the medicine o' Moylans' apothecary to 
get it off again." 

Father John walked the rest of the way to his home 
alone. 'We talk about a new dawn and a new day," he 
mused; "but in the light of that new day shall we have 
the sweetness and the patience and the cheerfulness and 
the dear faith that has set our race apart along the trying 
years? How will the new wine set m the old casks?" 

When he entered the house, the housekeeper an- 
nounced : 

"The man was here from Dublin about the altar 
wine." 

"Ay," he answered still musing, "but it may not set 
well in the old casks." 



Ill 

THE MEECHERS 

MIKE'S MIKEEN took care of Father John's gar- 
den and did odd jobs about the place. He was 
not the parish clerk, you understand, who rang 
the chapel bell and answered Mass of week days. Mike's 
Mikeen was different. One might call him a personal at- 
tendant, an attache, a persona privata, or the like. 

You see, Father John had a garden back of his house, 
where he grew vegetables, fruits and flowers. Little 
walks of slate stone made graceful curves around the 
flowerbeds and fruit trees. It was a place to dream of 
a summer morning, when the sun shone warm on the 
nodding roses, and the subtle scents of flower and fruit 
came to your nostrils pleasantly. There was the priest 
himself down at the end of the garden wearing his sou- 
tanne which the nuns at Ardee made for him. A short 
distance behind him stood the whitethorn hedge, and be- 
yond the hedge the fields ran level till they reached the 
base of the Ballyadan hills. 

Mike's Mikeen was ''earthing" the potato drills with 
the spade, and Father John stood watching him. What 
a glorious man he was — so tall, so erect, so strong! 
When he spoke, how mellow and measured his words; 
and when he looked how truth shone out of his eyes ! 
Yet he was not a man who read your soul, as it wefe; 
not a man who took a certain delight in being able to pen- 
etrate beyond the seeming His gaze was frank, not 

23 



24 Memory Sketches 

shrewd; his manner quiet, not lordly or pompous as if he 
were a general reviewing a regiment of troops. 

"Mikeen," he was saying as he watched the workman, 
"how long did you go to school?" 

" 'Bout, — 'bout, I should say," Mikeen answered, 
straightening himself and closing one eye while he looked 
at the sun, ''five year; or just whin I was ready to pass 
into first stage of fifth." 

''That's only four years, allowing a year to each 
class." 

''Ah no. Father; you see there's 'Red,' an' 'Green,' an' 
'Second,' an' 'Third,' an' 'Fourth.' " 

"Red and Green?" asked the priest in perplexity. 

"Ay. 'Red,' that's infant class and 'Green,' that's the 
first class." 

"Quite so, I remember." 

His National School days came back to the man of 
Maynooth training and temperament. 

"And if you had more schooling what would you be 
doing today?" 

"What would I be doln'?" 

"Ay." 

"I'd be earthin' drills with the spade." 

"Mightn't you be riding a black horse like Dr. Moy- 
len, or mightn't you be a clever attorney at Limerick, 
like Myles Hartlgan?" suggested. the priest. 

Mikeen changed the spade and leaned on the handle 
with his left shoulder, while the steel blade sank into the 
soft earth. He shook his head slowly. 

"No, Father John. My brain was always powerful 
slow. I never could do six figures o' sums without making 
seven mistakes, an' I couldn't read a page o' readin' with- 
out havin' to stop to spell 'bout half the words." 



The Meechers 25 



> )} 



" 'Dens resistit siiperhis et hiimilihus dat gratiam , 
quoted the priest with reflection. 

"True for you, Father," observed Mikeen. 

The priest laughed low and with unction as he turned 
and walked toward the whitethorn hedge at the end of 
the garden, and Mikeen resumed his toil. The blos- 
soms sweetened the air of the morning and lifted the 
heart of the priest like the odor of incense. 

''The day is young," he said to himself; ''the flat 
fields are green and the sky is the painter's sky when he 
would have us dream of summer. I'll climb the hills this 
day and see visions." 

He went back through the garden to the house, 
changed his soutanne for his clerical coat and soon was 
journeying across the fields to the Ballyadan hills. The 
short grass was springy below his feet, and the yellow- 
hearted daisies shone starlike everywhere. Hiding 
meadow-larks rose with a start at his coming, and brown 
insects buzzed about the long spears of grass making the 
day drowsy. The fragrant air was sweet to the sense, 
and the vigorous walking quickened the blood down along 
his veins. Midway in his journey over the flat fields, a 
stream hurried, bearing its tribute to the river Deel. 

Jim Madigan's two boys, Martin and Jack, sat on the 
bank of the stream fishing for minnows, using pins for 
hooks. When they saw the priest coming, they stood up, 
took off their caps, sticking the ends of the improvised 
fishing rods into the soft earth of the bank. Martin was 
red-headed and freckled. Jack was dark-haired and white- 
faced. The boots of both boys were as brown as the clay 
on the top of Paddy Donahue's sand-pit; their hands 
were rough, their clothes loose and unkept. 



26 Memory Sketches 

"No school today, boys?" questioned Father John sur- 
veying the two. 

Jack looked down and began to kick the green sod 
with the heel of his boot. Martin bit the linger nails of 
his right hand, and thrust his left into a torn trousers' 
pocket. The priest waited a little. 

"No school?" he asked again. 

"Yes, Father," Jack answered very low and sheep- 
ishly. 

"Then why are you here?" 

"We're meechin'," they both answered in a unison of 
abysmal humility. 

"Ah, ha, so you're playing truant!" Father John 
would insist on using the standard word. 

"Yes, Father," they replied not knowing what fate 
was awaiting them. 

The priest looked at the truants. They appeared so 
forlorn, so crushed, he pitied. The rough hands, the 
unkept clothes, the boots unpolished and badly laced 
served to check his rising indignation. Perhaps it was 
just as well. One is not so sure that Spartan severity is 
a more effective remedy for wrong-doing than is for- 
bearance. 

"Don't you know 'tis very shameful of you to spend 
your time out here when your parents think you're at 
school? You are young now, just at the age when you 
should be getting some schooling to help you on after- 
wards. What a shame it is to waste your time when you 
know 'twill never come back to you again ! O boys, boys, 
how you'll live to regret this when you're old ! Some day, 
as you work out in the garden in the rain and cold, you'll 
look back to this day and to other days like it and you'll 
say, 'If we only had sense and went to school we needn't 



The Meechers 27 

be out here now In the chill and In the damp trying to 
make a livelihood.' Boys, don't you know, 'tisn't the 
teachers, nor your parents, nor me you are harming, but 
yourselves? Now, you are like soldiers making ready 
for battle — the battle of life. What a shame It will be 
for you, and how crushed you'll feel at the thought, that 
you wasted your time and never made ready for the bat- 
tle when you were young! God help you, and you so 
foolish as to throw away your chances to get a school- 
ing!" 

The two "meechers" cried softly and rubbed the hot 
tears away with the backs of their hands. To tell the 
truth their spirits were crushed under the mild reproof 
into which there entered pity and regret. The priest's 
heart went out to the offenders. 

"Come, walk with me," he said. 

They went beside him like two sheep-dogs that had 
been chasing the sheep and were called to reckoning by 
their master. 

"You are sorry?" asked the priest with his eyes on 
the hill range. 

"Oh, yes. Father, I am," Martin answered, his eyes 
on the ground. 

"An' Father, I'll never do It again," added Jack in 
sincere repentance. 

"We'll say no more about It. So long as you promise 
never to let this happen again, we'll let bygones be by- 
gones. Now, come with me to the top of the hill." 

Even as the priest, a boy trotting at either side to keep 
up with his pace, caught the breeze pungent with the 
odor of the heather, he forgot the "meechers' " sin of 
omission. How could he think of schoolboy sins that day 
and he at the base of the Ballyadan hills! There were 



28 Memory Sketches 

the high skies of Ireland above him, and around him the 
bushes white with blossoms; there were mountain sheep 
searching in blissful leisure for sweet bits of green, their 
shorn backs white above the heath; robin, and linnet and 
thrush flashed forks of song across the air in a storm of 
melody. 

It was a long climb. At the top of the range, the 
priest paused and looked back over the way they had 
come. Far down, where the land was level, blossoming 
clover-fields lay still in the lap of the windless day, and 
wide ridges of potatoes were covered with stalks that 
stood matted together over the black soil. Growing 
mangold and turnip gardens, meadow-fields whitening to 
ripeness, acres of grain heavy with yield — all were spread 
before the city-bred priest as a wonder-world, the splen- 
dor of which he had never seen before. And glimmering 
through the bushes that grew on its banks, or smooth and 
shining as silver in the open spaces, the stream where the 
boys had been fishing, went songless to the river. Then 
the pulse that never ceases to beat came to him like re- 
mote thunder, the Deel leaping over the mill-dam on its 
way to the Shannon. 

''It shall bud forth and blossom and shall rejoice with 
with joy and praise; the glory of Libanus is given to it; 
the beauty of Carmel and Saron; they shall see the glory 
of the Lord and the beauty of our God I" quoted Father 
John. 

A magpie, with his white-and-black plumage and long 
tapering tail, rose from an old ruin to the west and flew 
toward them. 

*'Bad luck entirely!'' exclaimed Jack Madigan in a 
low voice that carried mystery. 

*'Why bad luck?" asked the priest 



The Meechers 29 

**Ah, you know, Father," explained Jack, proud of his 
knowledge, ''one magpie manes bad luck and two manes 
good." 

"Quite so, I remember,'' said the priest who had for- 
gotten the poetic imaginings of his peasant countrymen 
after years of wrestling with the nego and the concedo 
and the distinguo of dialecticians. 

"But how do you know that one magpie means bad 
luck?" 

"Well, Father," Jack ventured, forgetting his tru- 
ancy, "some say It does be true an' others again say 'tis 
only morhaya. Now to show that sometimes It does be 
true, there's Jim Dore who met one magpie when he was 
goin' to save hay back at Ballyadan. He fell asleep upon 
a cock o' timothy when 'twas very warm that same day, 
an' whin his mouth was open a lizard jumped into his 
mouth an' down his troat, an' he would ha' died only a 
nearby woman ran out o' her house with a bit o' fried 
bacon, an' put It up to his mouth an' whin the lizard 
smelt the bacon he jumped out again." 

"Yeh but," said Martin, "didn't Padeen Dannahar see 
two magpies the mornin' he was goin' to the forge an' 
didn't his horse run away anyhow an' lep over the ditch 
into Cronan's haggard?" 

"Ay so," asserted the priest, and added, ''Se non e 
vero e ben trovato." 

They walked along the hill-range to the ruins out of 
which the magpie had come. It was a still place, full of 
shadows. 

"Maybe a hermit lived and labored and prayed here," 
mused the priest while the boys wandered among the 
bushes in search of berries. "Maybe he dreamed his 
dreams and saw his visions, and maybe, too, he set them 



30 Memory Sketches 

down In songs as sweet as the lyrics of Columba; but 
they're gone, If they ever were, like most of the sweet 
things of Ireland, and not an echo remains." 

He looked down the other side of the hill. Far off 
where the land was level white houses shone like stars 
above emerald fields. 

'Tis a fair land — too fair to be in bondage,'* he 
thought as he surveyed the quiet country in the length- 
ening shadows. ''Maybe God wishes It; ay, no doubt He 
wishes it — for His own wise designs." 

It was an hour later than usual when Martin and 
Jack reached home that evening. 

''Where were ye?" demanded their father sternly. 

"Meechin," Jack answered without a tremor in his 
voice. 

"Yerra, my God, what do I hear?" exclaimed his sire. 

"Yeh, Jack," said Mrs. Madigan, who happened in, 
''is it takin' lave o' your sinses you are to talk that way?" 

"But 'tis true," the boy insisted. 

*'Get me the switch !" cried his father In a voice that 
always carried terror. 

"But sure Father John knows. We tould him, an' he 
forgave us whin we promised not to do It any more." 

"Father John!" said the father In amazement. 

"Ay. We met him down at the stream whin we were 
fishin'- We tould him the truth whin he asked us, an' he 
tould us to be good boys an' not do the like any more. 
We promised and wint with him to the top of Ballyadan, 
where we spint the day. That's why we're late." 

"Do ye mane our own priest, our Father John?" 
again asked the man of the house in wonder. 

"Ay!" 



The Meechers 31 

''Don't mind the switch, Jimmie," he advised a 
younger son who had set out to secure the Instrument of 
punishment. "But all the same, if ye grow up like tinkers 
somebody else will be to blame." 

**Don't spake that way about the priest, Jim," ad- 
vised Mrs. Madlgan. 

''Who's spaking about the priest, I'd like to know?" 

"Oh, well. If you arn't, 'tis aeqal," said his wife. 

" 'Tis; of course 'tis." Then with finality, "All the 
same, if thim boys grows up like tinkers 'tis I won't be to 
blame — 'tis I won't be to blame." 



IV. 
JIM REGAN'S FIRST COMMUNION. 

DR. MANGAN drove from Creelabeg in his side- 
car to see Jim Regan who had the typhoid fever. 
Jim was a large, ungainly, wondering-eyed boy 
who never came by his senses when they were due him. 
He lived with his people down at Coonamara, a bog-land 
valley where the mists hung heavy in the early morning 
before the sun lifted his head above Progue's Point. 
"Gray Coonamara," is what everybody called the long 
stretch of rush-covered bog that slept silent under the 
fostering of two hills. Out of this bog men lifted the black 
peat for the hand-turf; and, as they worked, you would 
think they were spirits, so shadowy they looked through 
the gray mist of the day. 

Well, Jim Regan was a big, soft lad whose mind 
wandered like an empty boat adrift. He could work 
down in the bog, to be sure, lifting the dark earth 
with his shovel; he could run to the spring and fetch a 
gallon of water to his mother; he could walk over to 
Craig's Hill in mid-May for the sheep and drive them 
back to the river for the washing. But for all that, Jim 
was a wondermg-eyed, half-witted creature who never 
thought alone or consecutively. 

He went to school when he was young, but you might 
as well try to make a sieve hold water, as Jim Regan's 
head hold ideas. Many an hour that good man, Mr. 
James Sullivan, gave to the defective lad trying to teach 
him the mysteries of the alphabet. You could hear the 
monotonous repetition, "A— A, B— B, C— C," above the 
32 



Jim Regan^s First Communion 33 

hum of the voices till your head grew dizzy. 

''Now, Jim," asked the teacher, "what letter is this?" 
Mr. SulHvan placed the pencil-point on the letter ''E." 
The large eyes looked long and fixedly at the letter, 
the tongue unloosed and Jim answered, ''B." Mr. Sul- 
livan shook his head sadly and Jim guessed again. It 
was no use; Jim Regan could not master the alphabet by 
any method known to the pedagogy of those days. There 
are other and newer methods now, but are children better 
and more quickly informed than before fads and faddists? 
One w^onders. 

Father John himself worked Saturday after Saturday 
In the early part of the day trying to get the elements of 
the catechism safely moored in. Jim's head. Sometimes 
It would seem as if a truth were anchored, when, lo, it 
was swept out to the open sea again ! 

"We'll let the lad alone for awhile," said the priest 
to Mrs. Regan one day. "We only worry and frighten 
him. In His time and way, God will make clear and 
easy what now seems so dark and difficult. We'll let 
the boy be for a time till we learn God's holy will in 
his regard." 

Well, Jim left school In his tenth year not a bit wiser 
than he was the day he began. 

. *'Goodby to you, Jim. I think 'tis best you go for 
the time being at least." 

The teacher shook hands with his pupil. 

"Ay, sir," Jim agreed, looking at the teacher with 
wide-open eyes. 

"Work in the open. You may learn more from the 
fields than you do from books." 

''Ay, sir." 

And Jim went away. 



34 Memory Sketches 

Then one day, years later, after he had wrestled with 
wind and rain season after season, Jim was brought to 
earth by typhoid. That was what hurried Dr. Mangan 
down the road from Creelabeg. 

''He's not well, ma'am; not well at all, and he should 
have the priest." 

"Yeh, but Doctor," whispered the mother, "sure the 
boy has never 'received' at all because he was never right 
in his mind." 

^"'Quite so, ma'am; quite so. And yet, ma'am, a visit 
from Father John would be a service; indeed a great 
service." 

"Ay, so, an' thank you. Doctor ! An' at your biddin', 
Fll send for the priest this day." 

Shortly afterward the eldest boy of the Regans went 
up the shortcut for Father John. 

In the afternoon the priest walked down over the 
fields to Coonamara. It was a silent, sunless day; a day 
of moods when memories tread on memories. As the 
priest paced along, grazing sheep lifted their heads and 
looked at him with quiet, well-bred curiosity. The 
gentle animals, exhaling their breaths on the windless 
day, quickened the priest to reflection. 

"Christ took the shepherd and the sheep," he mused, 
''to symbolize the intimate and tender relationship of 
rulers and people in His Church. The shepherd is 
watchful, solicitous, patient; the sheep docile, low- 
voiced, trustful." 

Down at Regans' poor Jim tossed about on his bed 
like a pine tree in a gale. When Father John entered 
th§ room, the large eyes rested on the priest's face. 

^'Hpw are you, Jim?'* 



Jim Regan's First Communion 35 

''How am I?" the boy echoed, while his eyes searched 
the priest's countenance, as If trying to remember. Then 
after a little: 

''Ay so, ay so; yes, you're Father John." 

"Yes, I'm Father John, come down to see you. You're 
a sick boy, and that's why I'm come. And Jim, dear, 
when we're very sick, we're like a man walking a tight 
wire trying to hold his balance." 

"I know. Sure I saw him In the circus." 

"Quite so. Sometimes he holds on and sometimes he 
falls off." 

"He held on when I saw him." 

"Quite so. But whether he falls off or holds on, if 
he's wise he'll have a net under him so he won't be hurt 
if he should fall." 

"Ay. 'Twill be all aequal to him thin, sure." 

"Now, Jim, as I said, when we're very sick we're 
like the man walking the wire. Eternity is under us. 
Do you understand?" 

"No." 

"Quite so, Indeed. Eternity goes beyond our deep- 
est sounding," mused the priest. 

"Well, the life to come Is under us. 'TIs a long, long 
fall from this life to the life hereafter. Confession and 
Holy Communion and Extreme Unction are the nets to 
soften the fall. 'TIs better to fall on a net that yields 
under us than on the rough, hard ground; and 'tis easier 
to fall on God's yielding mercy than on His hard justice. 
Do you follow me, Jim?" 

"I do; 'deed I do. An' if you give me the net I'll 
take it." 

Simply, by means of little illustrations from the life 
which the sufferer knew, the priest explained Confession, 



36 Memory Sketches 

Holy Communion and Extreme Unction. Jim could not 
keep apart sharp-edged distinctions, nor did the priest 
make any attempt to draw them. He arrived at the truth, 
half-hidden in the mists of his feebleness, that Holy 
Communion is receiving God, dwelling in some mysterious 
way in a small circular-shaped piece, that looks like very 
white bread, that Confession Is telling our sins to a priest 
through whom God forgives us if we are very sorry. 

The days went and Jim grew weaker. Then one 
summer morning Father John went down the growing 
country bearing the Bread of Life in the little brown 
burse which the nuns had made for him. The sun 
burned like a great sanctuary lamp from the blue of the 
sky; the yellow-hearted daises, fringed with white, 
adorned the level fields below Ballyadan; thrush and 
linnet and robin sang their hymns to the Presence as It 
passed. We always knew when Father John carried the 
Blessed Sacrament. It was not the little black bag he 
had In his hand, nor the silk string around his neck that 
told us. Indeed, It was not anything he carried that 
served as a sign. It was himself. His face was very 
still and very grave; he walked gently as if he were 
edging his way through the angels ; his salute was a nod, 
and he never looked when he nodded. 

*'Have you brought Him?" asked Jim, his face as 
wan as the pillow. 

"Yes," answered Father John ever so gently. Mem- 
bers of the family crept into the room and knelt down. 

"I was dramin' of Him this mornin'." 

The priest went on with his preparations for giving 
the Holy Viaticum. He read a short, sweet prayer of 
welcome which the sick boy recited after him and then 
he placed the Bread of Life on the parched tongue of 



Jim Regan^s First Communion 37 

the sufferer. The family and the priest retired to the 
kitchen and Jim was alone. A little later the priest 
returned. 

"Are you feeling better, Jim dear?" asked Father 
John. 

"Yeh no; I'm very tired and goln' like. But 'tis 
aequal now an' He with me, for I'll fall into the net." 

The eyes closed languidly, the head tossed from side 
to side. The priest saw that Jim was passing out. He 
placed the white Crucifix to the lips of the dying boy and 
ejaculated the Holy Name. 

Jim opened his dimming eyes feebly and murmured 
*'JesusI" A few moments later he took the priest's 
right hand between his hands, now growing moist and 
cold, and murmured: 

'Tm fallin' — fallin', but He's with me, so — so — 
'tis aequal." 

A little twitching of the mouth, a little turning of the 
head, a little convulsive tightening of the hands on the 
hand of the priest, a gasp, one heavy breath, and Jim 
Regan had fallen off the wire of life to eternity. 

The family came quickly to the bedside, while the 
priest stood watching the silent dead. 

"Is it gone, he is?" asked Mrs. Regan, not yet un- 
derstanding. 

"Yes, gone," answered Father John. 

"Sure he had hardly time to make his thanksgiving, 
and this the day of his First Communion," observed the 
mother. 

"He will finish it in Heaven, where he Is," answered 
Father John, as he passed out from the room. 



V 
THE STRANGER. 

THE autumn was on us with summer only a melan- 
choly memory. The bees that droned above the 
June roses still droned around faded spears of 
grass, but the roses were gone; the trees waved their 
salutations when the wind came gently from the nearby 
sea, but their leaves that awhile ago were soft with sap 
and green with life, now rustled below the bare feet of 
children returning from school. It was mid-afternoon, 
sombre and still. Father John had walked down to the 
north side of the parish to settle some dispute between 
a couple of neighbors, and was midway on the return 
journey. 

We often wondered, to tell the truth, why he always 
walked forth and back, hither and yon along out-of-the- 
way paths, in among fields, instead of the white roads 
where cart wheels and the feet of people went unceasingly. 

Perhaps it was the wish to be alone which some men 
have. Silence makes us pensive and fills our day with 
the people of our dreams. In the silence memory comes 
and hovers, and brings back the friends who are away; 
from over a sea, that flings its spray on the edges of two 
continents, from over a continent that hears the music 
of two seas, they reach us. They greet us when they 
come, they converse with us, and when the hour comes — 
they go away. 

Father John was just on the top of Progue's Point, 
with white-washed houses all along the valley below. He 
38 



The Stranger tfi 39 

walked through a gap in the stone ditch, where the herds 
went when passing from one field to another. To the 
right of the gap a man stood watching the level land ex- 
tending from the base of the slope. His face was 
clean-shaved and thin; the edge of hair appearing below 
his hat shone white. One would say he was between 
sixty-five and seventy. 

''Good evening," said the priest resting his eyes for 
a moment on the face of the man. 

''Good evening. Father." The stranger lifted his 
hat like one accustomed to life's niceties. 

Father John was about to continue his journey, but 
something in the man's quiet manner arrested him. 

"You don't live around here, do you? I ask, because 
I have a hidden conceit I know everybody within a radius 
of ten miles." 

*'No, Father, I don't live here — at least not now." 

"Maybe a native returned then?" 

How quietly, without any least suggestion of shrewd- 
ness, did Father John put the question. The stranger 
looked at the priest and smiled ever so gently. 

"Father, I have traveled and seen men. I've watched 
men's eyes to read their souls. I've had to, else I 
mightn't be alive to tell it. I don't often answer a ques- 
tion that relates to myself. I can't afford to. But now, 
and to you, 'tis different. The truth is — I am a native 
returned. 

"Ay," was all the priest answered as he set off on his 
journey. 

"Father," the stranger called, "wouldn't you like to 
hear my story ? Maybe you'd find it worth listening to ?" 

Father John returned and leaned his elbows on the 
ditch beside the "native returned." 



40 Memory Sketches 

"Every man has a right to his secrets," said the 
priest. 

**Maybe 'tis because you do not seem curious to hear 
that I'm anxious to tell." 

"Very well, I'll listen with interest." 

"About forty years ago — or before you were born" — 

"No, I'm forty-one." 

"Well, you don't look it. At that time there used 
to be a house down near the base of Progue's Point on 
the west side where the land runs level to the river 
Deel." 

"I know it; the four walls are still standing in from 
the road. I walked through the place only last week." 

"Ay, that's it. Well, I used to live there about forty 
years ago with my father, mother and two sisters. Our 
next neighbor, a poor man with a large family, fell into 
hard luck with his stock for two years running, and in spite 
of his own pleading and the pleading of the priest, he 
was evicted just three days before Christmas. There 
was feeling galore all over this section of the country, 
and talk of armed resistance and what not. Well, 
it all came to nothing, of course, and the poor man and 
his family were pitched out on the road. I was loud in 
my talk about the shame of the thing, and said I would 
do this and do that, like any young fellow says whose 
feelings run ahead of his judgment. With the new year 
came an emergency man on the farm, and that meant 
no reinstatement of the tenant for years — if ever. The 
men of the neighborhood went wild with passion; it all 
seemed so inhuman and so unnecessary. They talked 
fiercely of the cruelty and injustice, and threatened venge- 
ance. And in order not to set myself down in any 



The Stranger 41 

good light, I may say to you, Father, I was the wildest 
and fiercest among them. The government sent three 
policemen to guard the emergency man, but for all that 
he was shot through the heart one morning while count- 
ing some cattle In the middle of a large field. A slip of 
paper was found beside his body on which was written, 
'The last resource of a famished people against a sys- 
tem.' I had been so loud in my protests, so Insistent In 
demands for justice at any cost, that at once I was sus- 
pected. Besides, I had some education, having gone to 
the Monks' school In Adare for four years. An official 
of the gov^ernment said, 'The bombast on the paper is 
written by a fellow with some education.' I had some 
education as I have said — not profound, you understand, 
but a smattering here and there with some small gift 
for making phrases In addition. I was suspected, and 
I knew it. To be done with protest and denial, let me 
say to you. Father — and It is now over a reach of forty 
years — I am as Innocent of the death of that man as you 
are. But protesting one's innocence was of little use 
in those days — I find It isn't of much use nowadays 
either. The day on which the emergency man was killed 
I bade my people goodby and went into hiding, as we 
called it. That meant keeping under cover as best one 
could — here today and there tomorrow. Of course that 
couldn't last, running from cover to cover like a fox with 
the hounds giving tongue behind him. I knew it couldn't. 
The longer I kept on the run the less my chance for final 
escape. 

"You didn't know Father Clancy, did you, Father? 
No, of course; he must be dead now thirty-seven or 
thirty-eight years. Ah, he was a man with a heart more 



42 Memory Sketches 

like the heart of Christ than any other man I ever knew. 
'Tis no wonder we Irish at home and over seas love the 
priests, for I tell you they have stood between us and 
annihilation. Well, In the dark of the night, after a 
week of agony, running from hiding to hiding, I rang 
the door-bell of Father Clancy's house. The maid 
answered the bell. 

"'The priest,' I whispered. 

" 'Ay,' she answered, and went upstairs to tell him. 
I sat In the little parlor waiting, and watched the blaze 
from the coal fire in the grate. A chill wind blew down 
from the Ballyadan Hills and all the stars were hid be- 
hind folds of black clouds. As the clock finished strik- 
ing ten, I heard steps coming down the stairs; then the 
parlor door opened and Father Clancy, wearing his 
soutane, stood in the middle of the room. 

" ^Father,' I cried, 'they're after me I' 

" 'I know that'," he said, 'but there Is no occasion for 
telling it to the whole world.' 

"Then It came to me I had spoken too loud. The 
priest pulled down the blinds, lowered the oil lamp a 
little, and then sat down by the grate fire. 

" 'Come here,' he said In a voice so kind I shall hear 
it always. I sat beside him, facing the fire. I stole a 
look at his face on which the flames played. I have 
never seen a human face so sweet. It was not so much 
a beautiful face, as it was an open, benevolent face. 

"'You didn't do that thing?' he said softly, looking 
at the fire. 

" 'I swear before God this night, I didn't.' 

" Tou needn't swear, my son. "Man's word is God 



The Stranger 43 

in man." If your word Isn't good, I doubt If your oath 
would be.' 

'* 'Father, I never did that thing,' I declared looking 
up at him. 

" 'I bellev^e you,' he answered, resting his eyes on my 
face for some seconds. 

'' 'Now, my son, you must get out of here — and you 
must get out of here soon.' 

''My heart sank within me for I thought he was going 
to turn me out. 

" 'They may not know you're here tomorrow, but 
they will surely know tomorrow week. So 'tis for you 
and me to waste no time making ready your escape.' 

"Father Clancy used to be an actor In his student 
days and made up the boys' faces to suit the characters 
they played. 

" 'You'll be a priest visiting me, and In a day or two 
you'll leave. Don't have much to say while you are 
here.' 

"Next day he made up my face and got me a clerical 
suit, and I looked for all the world like a young priest 
just out of Maynooth. I stayed with him for two days, 
walking out In his garden, but never speaking much to 
the people of the village. 

"All at once, on the third morning, the two of us 
went down to the village station and took the train for 
Limerick Junction and then Queenstown. Father Clancy 
had already secured me second-class passage for America, 
when we reached Queenstown, and the following morn- 
ing I set sail for America. The last act of that noble 
priest when I left him before passing Into the tender, 



44 Memory Sketches 

was to press two five-pound notes into my hand as he 
said 'Goodby/ 

*' ''Twill give you a start, my son, in a new world. 
Be careful, and keep as close to God as ever you can." 

"The tears were streaming down my face as he 
waved 'Goodby.' 

'''His nephew, I suppose, goin' over to America for 
a few seasons before he gets a place here at home,' said 
an old woman going out to the big steamer to sell lace. 

"After I was a day out, I changed my clerical suit 
and became myself again. Fortune favored me in 
America, as it does many an Irish lad, for I made money 
in plenty out West in the mines. I will say, too, in 
justice to myself, that I didn't forget the great priest 
who stood by me in my distress, when I came into my own. 

"And now. Father," he concluded, "you will under- 
stand why I'm not afraid to tell my story to a priest. 
They have faults, maybe, like the rest of us, but they 
never tell; no, they never tell." 

"Father Clancy was the parish priest of Creelabeg, 
wasn't he, when he came between you and the law?" 
asked Father John, as he looked thoughtfully toward 
the white houses now losing their outlines in the falling 
darkness. 

"Ay, Creelabeg." 

"Well, I'm the parish priest there now." 

"You are ! Well, well, the kind God is still with me ! 
So you are the parish priest of Creelabeg. Then you 
must let me shake your hand for your own sake and for 
the sake of him that's gone." 

The priest and the exile shook hands. 



The Stranger 45 

"My name is Father Condon," Father John said in 
his quietest manner. 

"And my name, Father, Is Hayes — John Hayes." 

"I have heard of you — your name's a tradition here." 

"And you never said so all this time I've been telling 
you my story!" 

"As I remarked at the beginning, a man has a right 
to his secrets." 

"Thank you. Father, thank you ! You are gener- 
ous," said Hayes, visibly touched. 

'*And now, sir," said Father John, in that grand man- 
ner that made us all love him, "I want you to come with 
me and spend the night In the house where you spent it 
years ago with Father Clancy." 

John Hayes, whose heart-aches for home forced him 
back to green fields and danger of arrest, spent a week 
with Father John. Together they stood above the 
grave of Father Clancy laid to rest In the chapel yard; 
together they climbed the Ballyadan Hills and saw the 
flat farms to the West, and to the East grazing cattle 
and sheep. 

Then on Monday morning the exile said to the man 
of Maynooth culture: "I've seen his grave so still and 
shady back in the chapel yard; I've seen the fields where 
I wandered as a lad, the blue stream winding down over 
the meadows, and the Ballyadan Hills. And, Father 
Condon, I thank you whose heart is like the heart of 
Father Clancy, whose heart I know was like the heart 
of Christ Himself. Goodby. I've seen all I want tq 
see, and I'm going back now. God bless you !" 

"God bless and keep you!" answered the priest. 



46 Memory Sketches 

Well, you know we never found out who gave the 
marble altar to the memory of Father Clancy, which to 
tell the truth, was much too grand for the rest of the 
chapel, though not, of course, for the Lord of Hosts. 

"Father John, who gave us the fine marble altar?" 
Mike's Mikeen ventured one day, by virtue of his in- 
timate position. 

"A man has a right to his secrets," answered the 
priest. 

"Ay; or a nod is as good as a wink to a blind man," 
ventured Mikeen oracularly. 

"Quite so," said Father John. 



VI 
CHOOSING THE PEOPLE. 

THE Whitmores of Knockderrig were rich Catholics 
of the landlord class, who owned one-half the farms 
of Creelabeg parish. The ''Great House" In 
which Captain Whitmore lived was set In some three 
hundred yards from the main road on the crest of a 
hill overlooking the river Deel. Although of the same 
Faith as the rest of the people, the Whitmores kept 
strictly within their class, never entering Into the life of 
the rank and file. They were charitable enough, in- 
deed, Mrs. Whitmore herself and Miss Emma and Miss 
Geraldlne often ministering personally to the sick and 
the poor. But, as you know. It Is one thing to help 
and to give as an angel out of the skies, and another 
to mingle with and live the lives of those we serve. Nor 
is this said In complaint. From the beginning till now 
there have been rich and poor, gentle and simple; and 
so, no doubt. It will be to the end of the world. Just as 
there are differences In the height of human beings, so 
there are differences in their worldly possessions and at- 
tainments. Religion cannot equalize people. All are 
free to kneel before the same altar, to receive the Bread 
of life at the same table, to confess and promise repara- 
tion within the same tribunal of mercy. Still, some are 
rich and gifted and some are poor and undistinguished; 
some walk the heights with the saints, and some are 
down in the depths thinking of God sometimes and 
striving a little to reach Him; or, perhaps, not thinking 
of Him at all. So you see, one has no fault to find with 

47 



48 Memory Sketches 

the Whitmores of Knockderrig for living more or less 
remote from the rest of the parish. 

All the priests we ever had were friendly with the 
family. It was very proper they should be, too, for the 
Whitmores served the chapel as no other family could. 
Every Saturday Miss Emma and Miss Geraldine deco- 
rated the altars with flowers from their own garden. 
Mrs. Whitmore played the little reed organ up in the 
gallery and the two young ladies sang. They donated 
rare flower vases, candlesticks, vestments, a set of silver- 
mounted Stations, not to mention hundreds of lesser gifts 
one forgets. So, all said, It was a special blessing to have 
such generous people within the parish limits of 
Creelabeg. 

The Whitmores had a chapel in their own house 
where the priest read Mass once a month. Sometimes, 
too, they invited him over to tea at four o'clock, or to 
dinner at seven. We all thought it was very pleasant 
for our parish priests to have one family to whom they 
could go every now and then and feel at home. Of 
course, they went to the poor and the lowly, too, when 
they were sent for, and often when they Vere /not. 
But with their nice discernment, the priests must have 
noticed that, try as they would, it was hard for plain 
people to be at ease In their presence. The art in 
serving lies in seeming not to serve. 

Well, Father John, more than any of the priests who 
went before him, was always a welcome guest at the 
**Great House." He was brilliant In conversation, mak- 
ing language step gracefully off his tongue. He ex- 
pressed his thoughts In unexpected fashion, and rarely 
allowed himself to run into the rut of an old phrase. 
But he was a man whose passion was the plain people, 



Choosing the People 49 

who loved Ireland with the Intensity of a fervid Fenian. 
So, of course, he felt every time he visited the Whit- 
mores he must be silent on many a theme dear to his 
heart. Landownership by the people of the soil; the 
right on the part of a civilized race to govern Itself; 
the over-ridden condition of the country from soldiers 
and constabulary. Indeed, well-nigh every theme was 
a forbidden theme; for, somehow, every theme led back 
to Ireland. Well, anyhow. Father John had all the in- 
stincts of a rare gentleman, and preferred to be silent 
or Impersonal on many a subject rather than offend the 
man with whom he broke bread. But the longest boreen 
leads out to the main road some place, and the priest 
and the landlord came at last to where. In a sense, they 
reached the main road and parted company. 

The early summer of '87 promised great crops. 
Green ridges of grain, and potato drills rich with prom- 
ise were spread like the Garden of Paradise along the 
country-side. Men waited with hopeful hearts for the 
first potato-digging on the feast of St. James, and 
dreamed of wheat-ears ''the full of a fist" In late August. 
But when the long, lingering days of mid-June came, 
little brown spots were seen on the wide leaves of the 
potato stalks. 

"Great God," exclaimed Jim Ahern, '"tis the bhght'" 
It was. You have heard of the dread that falls on 
the Inhabitants of a city awaiting the Invading hosts 
when the first distant boom of cannon comes to them; 
you yourself have felt a mysterious catching at the heart 
when the heavens filled up with clouds, when the day 
grew dark and hot and very still, and when out of the west 
came the flashing light and the growling thunder. Well, 
that was Jim Ahern's feeling when he looked across 



50 Memory Sketches 

the potato field from Danaher road that day in mid- 
June; and that was how everybody in County Limerick 
felt a week later as signs became certainties. When a 
merchant sees his cargo sink below the salt waters at 
the rim of the bay, it is no wonder he is heart-sick, and 
the fruition of his hope lost almost within his grasp! 
When a man, after a long climb, loses his grip at last 
and falls back into the abyss, his seems an unmerciful 
fate ! So, too, it was hard for all County Limerick to 
witness the green promise of late June blackened by 
the blight of early July. The blue and white blossoms 
withered and fell to earth; the stalks ^ rotted and 
freighted the warm wind of the south with a sickening 
odor. Where before men labored with glad hearts to 
weed around the bending stalks and to put fresh earth 
against the drills, they now looked with tired eyes, 
dreaming of what might have been and was not. 

When the November rents came due, Captain Whit- 
more sent out to his Creelabeg tenants the usual notices. 
The tenants had not the money to meet his demands. 
You cannot stop up a gap in a ditch with salt-water, as 
they say; neither can you pay a half-year's rent with 
'trahneens.' Captain Whitmore did not like to evict any 
of his tenants; but, blight or no blight, he wanted his 
rents. He was in a dilemma, as Father Madigan used 
to say, and that is why he sought the aid of Father John. 

The priest and the Captain were walking along the 
road below Progue's Point in mid-November. It was 
a sullen day, with never a sign of a smile over the blue 
face of Lough Derrig, nor a single tree nodding a salu- 
tation. Matted clouds were spread below all heaven, 
and crows, black and unlovely, flew close to earth caw- 
ing impudently. 



Choosing the People 51 

"Father John, It has come to a pass where IVe got 
to do something about my rents. I've had promises 
by the thousands, but no money. I'm convinced my 
tenants are playing on my good nature." The Captain 
showed some feeling as he spoke. 

'Well," answered Father John, the quiet smile we 
all loved lingering on his lips, ''I haven't been under 
the Impression that people consider you a spendthrift 
in the matter of good-nature, my dear Captain." 

''But, as a matter of fact, I am. Father John. I 
haven't evicted my tenants as hundreds of our landlords 
do, and I have permitted them to postpone payments 
almost every year. In return for my concessions here 
and my settlements there, I get a world of excuses, a 
poor mouth about the low prices this year and the fail- 
ure of the crops next. If 'tisn't one thing, 'tis another. 
In fact, I'm getting so tired of It all, I have come to 
the conclusion I must have my rents." 

''Captain, 'tis rather an unfortunate year In which 
to take so drastic a resolution. You know what the blight 
has done." 

"I know — and next year there will be something else !" 
''Now, Captain," said the priest, stopping In his walk 
and facing the landlord, ''you speak as if your tenants 
have been doing nothing from year to year but shirking. 
As a matter of fact, I happen to know they have been 
making great sacrifices to meet their obligations. You 
are obsessed with the idea of pay, pay, no matter how. 
A five-pound note seems a trifle to you; 'tis a small for- 
tune to some of your tenants. You assume that because 
they do not pay promptly, they do not wish to pay at all. 
As a matter of fact, when they do not pay, it is because 
they cannot." 



52 Memory Sketches 

"Father John, I know these tenants, and I know they 
put me last In their reckoning." 

The priest smiled sadly as he looked at the Captain. 

"You know them? No, no. Captain, you do not. 
You see them from the sunlight of your mountain-top. 
They seem puny in their world of the plains. They seem 
sniveling, whining peasants, who will lie for the sake 
of a few pennies, who cannot look a man in the face 
for fear he might read their hearts. Unconsciously, 
my dear Captain, you set them apart as serfs, bloodless 
creatures, created to serve. You think because they do 
not pay you, they are lying to you. You cannot con- 
ceive that they have human loves, human sympathies, 
human honor. You take the attitude 'get what you can 
willy, nilly.' Indeed, you do not know this people, 
Captain." 

"Father John, will you please listen? I need the 
money as well as hundreds of other landlords all over 
the country, and it has come to such a pass that I must 
have it. And I'm going to ask you to use your influ- 
ence to help me get it. Your people idolize you. 
They'll pay me my rent, as a matter of duty, if you 
tell them to pay. You surely can make them see their 
obligation to pay a just debt. I want you to help me, 
as a friend." 

"Captain, I have influence with these people, if you 
choose to put it that way. I know their lives, lives of 
struggle against poverty and want. They get little, ex- 
cept what the earth gives, and when the earth's yield 
is affected they suffer. They struggle for the necessities 
of life, and the lords of this land are wasting its lux- 
uries. I know, just as surely as I see you, that there 
are men of this parish, tenants of yours, who are asking 



Choosing the People S3 

a merciful God to show them a way to find food to feed 
the waiting mouths of little children tomorrow morning. 
You ask me to use my Influence with these people to 
secure you your rent. Let me state a more humane 
proposition. Let me use whatever small Influence I 
may have with you to secure for our people, yours 
and mine, consideration and mercy In this time of 
distress." 

"So, so. You would turn your guns on me; you 
would have me surrender; you would have me make 
whatever concessions are to be made." 

"Captain, you neither surrender nor concede. You 
show mercy, if you are merciful." 

"Father John, I asked you to help me In a small way; 
I asked you to urge your people to give me what is due 
me, and what the law of the land will let me have. I will 
not step down to mention my services and the services of 
my family to the religion we hold In common. I scorn 
to call to your mind my ministrations and my people's 
ministrations to these tenants. You know them, you 
must know them. Very good. Now comes [the one 
moment of all my years when I ask a priest whom I 
esteem highly, whose interests I have followed, to render 
me a service, and I take It, he refuses." 

"I cannot urge a tenantry to pay rents, when their 
children are hungry," answered the priest, his voice full 
of emotion. 

"You can serve a man who has served you and those 
who came before you for years and years," said the 
Captain bitterly. 

"When a service to my best friend works Injustice 
to a people, then I may not serve that friend." 



54 Memory Sketches 

"Then, as between me and the people, you choose 
the people." 

"Yes, I choose the people." 

The Captain shook hands with the priest, lifted his 
tweed cap and walked the road west to the *'Great 
House." Father John watched the frowning sky 
through the falling darkness. The face of Lough 
Derrig was as still as the face of the dead, and the 
air was silent, for the crows had winged themselves to 
their forest homes. 

Said Jim Donnelly to Johnny Magee a year later: 

''The Whitmores don't seem to be as 'great' with 
Father John as they used to be." 

"They don't, man, an' I wonder why?" 

"Maybe they wanted him to do somethin' he didn't 
want to." 

"An' wouldn't he?" 

"Oh, faith, he's o' that kind, he wouldn't if he 
didn't want to." 



VII 
THE HOLY FATHERS 

THE fourth Sunday In May, at the last Mass, was 
the time set for the Mission to begin. Father 
John announced it from the altar two weeks before 
so we had time enough to think it over and, above all, to 
talk it over. We hoped and prayed that the weather 
would be fitting, — still days with the sun warm on all 
the land, calm nights and the sky pulsing with millions 
of stars. We knew there would not be so much work 
by then, for the potatoes would be "set" and the oats 
would be ready to peep above the ground. It would 
still be a little early to cut the meadow-hay, and the 
clover would already be made into '"cocks." So, all 
said, the time was wisely selected by the wise head of 
Father John. 

And then they came, that Sunday when daisies 
showed white and yellow on every field. God blessed us, 
too, with a blue sky and a warm sun as we had hoped. 
All the world about was still, as if listening, and a gentle 
wind came up from the mouth of the Shannon. The 
chapel was crowded to the doors; and beyond the 
doors out on the gravel men knelt or stood with bared 
heads during the holy Mass. Then when Father John 
had finished the Sacrifice and the little clerk had snuffed 
out the candles. Father Driscoll, the Franciscan, came 
out from the sacristy to preach the opening sermon. 
He was a man of average height, rather stout, dark 
complexloned with large, frank eyes. He looked at us 
for a period of twenty seconds before ever he said a 

55 



56 Memory Sketches 

word at all. Maybe it was to get his ideas into forma- 
tion for marching, or maybe to take mental accounting of ,^ 
our souls' condition: whether he should preach heaven 
or hell or purgatory or salvation through striving or 
judgment after death. One does not know. Anyhow, 
after his survey, he began with the single word: "Be- 
loved." Father McCarthy always started out with 
"My Brethren," sounding the first e like u. Father 
John said "My dear Brethren," or "My Brethren"; but 
sometimes, when thoughts surged against his brain; 
when, as we say, he was full of a subject and ideas 
sought an outlet, he began with a rush not saying "Yes," 
"Ay," or "No" to anybody. 

Well, when Father Driscoll said "Beloved," we 
thought it was a word peculiar to the diction of the "Holy 
Fathers," and that helped all the more to get what may 
be called the Mission atmosphere. To people who live 
in the hollow places of the world and who see none of 
the splendors of the heights, any little departure from 
the life they know quickens interest. That is why the 
brown habit and the white cord and the hood and the 
single word, "Beloved," suggested the strange, the mys- 
terious and the far-away. 

So many days have come and gone since that still, 
warm Sunday in late May, one does not remember any 
more the opening message of the Mission. One remem- 
bers the splendor of the sunlight, the listening throng, 
the attitude of the preacher and the cadences of his voice. 
These form a picture that holds a quiet corner all to itself 
in the memory. 

Father O'Kelly, the other preacher, was a slim man 
with a face as thin and as sweet as the face of St. 
Anthony, whose statue was set in our chapel next to the 



The Holy Fathers 57 

Blessed Mother herself. One cannot be sure, of course; 
but I think Father Drlscoll's chief mercy was to pour 
the vinegar of cleansing on the wounds of our souls, 
while Father O'Kelly's great ministration was to lessen 
the smart with the oil of soothing. Each had his special 
work — to cleanse or to soothe. The vinegar was neces- 
sary, no doubt; but we liked the oil better. A wise God 
does not create all priests of a mould. Some must do 
the hard, unlovely work, must pluck bad habits out of 
our souls as we pluck a thorn out of the foot of a child. 
In doing so they hurt us, of course, but they cannot 
help that. 

So one does not set Father O'Kelly beside Father 
Driscoll for the sake of making what our own Father 
John would call "an invidious comparison." No, in- 
deed. They w^ent together doing good everywhere, the 
one supplementing and completing the other. Father 
O'Kelly was what you would call a quiet preacher. 
His thoughts were not billows breaking on the rocks with 
a rumble; no, they were like the waves of Lough 
Derrig, running upon the sand with a long swish. He 
preached one sermon on our Lady which Mr. Sullivan, 
the school-teacher, made us write down and keep. 

''That is literature," he said; ''keep it always." 
"God set her in His Heaven," is a paragraph one re- 
calls, "a virgin and a mother. The virgin, she typifies 
that which makes woman fairest — purity; a mother, she 
typifies that which makes woman most lovable — mother- 
hood. You young women may look to her and see in 
her your model — the maiden undefiled, the lily without 
spot; you mothers may look to her and see in her un- 
selfish love of oftspring, her gentle fostering, her un- 
complaining watchfulness examples of the virtues that 



•58 Memory Sketches 

must find root and blossom and fruitage in your lives. 
We are all called to serve, but the service of each is 
somehow peculiar. Some serve in the school, in the or- 
phanage, by the sick bed; some in the home showing 
small hands how to join in prayer, young eyes how to 
raise in adoring love, young lips how to whisper the sweet 
Name. It matters not where we serve or how lowly the 
service. She — ^Mary Virgin, Mother — is the fair model 
of us all. We can not reach up to her — she is too high in 
the Heaven of her holiness; but we can look up to her 
and call to her out of the darkness of our world to the 
world made bright by her shining." 

One cannot begin to tell of the personal visits made 
to the poor and afflicted by these dear priests during 
their two weeks' sojourn among us. Mrs. Donovan 
who was bedridden for years, Maggie Noonan whose 
mind became affected in a strange way and imagined all 
kinds of horrors, Tom Condon who drank a bit at times, 
John Hogan, grown despondent because he lost a splendid 
position in Dublin through his own carelessness — these 
and ever so many others were seen and counselled and 
consoled; many of them received new hope for a fresh 
start. Then on the last Sunday we had the great Mis- 
sion-procession after the last Mass. The day, like all 
the days of the two weeks, was warm and still. Imme- 
diately to the west of the chapel a field lay flat above the 
town. At one corner of the wide acres Jim Donnelly 
and a couple of the boys, at the bidding of Father John, 
erected a great black wooden cross to which the white 
Figure was transfixed. How solemn the massive crucifix 
appeared under the still, sunlighted heavens that day as 
you looked toward the field from the edge of the town! 
It made you think of Calvary and His dear, bruised 



The Holy Fathers 59 

body against the dark horizon. Only there was no roll- 
ing thunder, no cleaving of mountains, no white-faced 
dead awakened out of their graves from the horror that 
He was killed. The people of Creelabeg did not shake 
their clenched fists at the Sign looking down on them 
from the Mission Field that Sunday, as did the Jews 
when they looked at Him in the hours of His thirst and 
nakedness beyond Jerusalem. 

It was one o'clock before the head of the procession 
went through the chapel gates. There was the boy with 
the cross, and a clerk with a lighted candle at either side 
of him; came the school children next, certain chosen 
ones bearing blue-and-white banners, with Mr. Sullivan 
leading the Rosary. Jim Donnelly, carrying a great 
silken standard, cross-mounted, preceded the men for 
whom Captain Whitmore said the "Hail Mary." There 
were probably four hundred men, all told, of every size 
and age. The deep hum of their answering "Holy 
Mary" was pleasing to hear that summer day. The 
young ladles of the parish, whom Father John organized 
Into a sodality, prayed and sang alternately; the married 
women followed, but they made no attempt at song. One 
sees, to be sure, more imposing processions every month 
of the year; processions in which scarlet, and purple, and 
white, and cloth of gold are harmoniously blended; 
processions in which bands fill the sunshine with sound, 
and in which the swords of belted soldiers flash and grow 
dim. But, somehow, over wide seas and long years, 
those simple, unbedecked men, those women and children 
moving slowly around Mission Field above Creelabeg, 
the White Figure watching them from the cross, quicken 
the pensive mood and the sigh for the long ago. 

We were lonely when the "Holy Fathers" left us the 



60 Memory Sketches 

next Monday morning for a mission somewhere else. 
Those of us who lived out in the country missed the sen- 
sation of walking up the fields calm evenings under the 
stars. We missed the forceful sermons of Father Dris- 
coll and the gentle preachments of Father O'Kelly. The 
two women out from Limerick to sell religious articles 
packed their tents into donkey carts and went to another 
town; the great Crucifix was taken down from its high 
position at the end of the field and looked no more to- 
ward Creelabeg; the chapel bell did not bid us hurry 
for the Rosary, sermon and Benediction; the children 
did not go to the chapel any more at three o'clock to say 
the Stations. All these ripples in our quiet life had 
ceased, and the stream ran on as always. 

Yes, the "Holy Fathers" were indeed gone, leaving us 
better for their coming but sadder for their going. 

*Tm not the same man any more since they came 
here," Johnny Mangan confided to Mike's Mikeen one 
day at the west end of the bridge, shortly after the "Holy 
Fathers" had left us. 

"How do you riiane?" asked Mikeen. 

"I mane I'm better like. An' I hope I'll sthay so." 

"Well, sure that's what they came for, man, to make 
you better." 

"Ay, but sometimes you shoot into a flock o' crows 
an' you miss a powerful lot o' thim," 

"Well, they didn't miss you anyhow, so 'tis all aequal." 

"Ay, 'tis so. I'm better in earnest now — if I only 
stay better." 



VIII 

DOLORES. 

4 4"jy yr ARY DOLORES" was how they named her 
/\/ 1 when she was christened on the Feast of our 

•^ ^ -^ Lady's Seven Sorrows. Two strange facts 
followed soon after which you would never understand 
at all if you understood Creelabeg. First of all, people 
dropped the ''Mary" and called the child ''Dolores"; and 
secondly, they never shortened "Dolores" to "Doll" or 
"Dolly." Mike Hannon of Fennora used to say there 
were seven things the mind of man could never fathom, 
one of which was the source of the tide. To the seven 
must be added two new ones: the survival of the name 
"Dolores" and its survival without abbreviation. 
"Dolores" seemed a name too remote from the lives of 
plain people to be used in every-day speech; also, it 
seemed much too splendid for one whose retreat was 
set with the simple poor in the valley of life. It must 
have been a special favor from our dear Lady herself 
that the child had so lovely a name and that nobody ever 
dropped a single one of its sweet syllables. 

Well, then, Dolores Egan was born at the west side of 
Progue's Point, where the sun came all the afternoon, 
and was baptized Seven Sorrows' Day by Father 
McCarthy some years before he went away. Her dolors 
began before she felt their weight. On her second birth- 
day her young father was drowned while swimming back 
in the river Deel one Sunday after Mass. John Egan 
was just twenty-three when he was called so suddenly, 
leaving behind him a wife a year younger than himself. 

61 



62 Memory Sketches 

Young Mrs. Egan, (she used to be Anna McCabe) died 
six months later giving birth to her second girl. The 
infant lived an hour and was baptized by Mrs. Hackett 
before it gave up its young life. There had been many 
sad funerals at Creelabeg, for the years are long and 
death comes strangely, but never in all memory was any- 
thing so weighed with woe as was the placing away of 
Mrs. Egan and her second girl. She lay white and 
still in the coffin, the child beside her. She had a sweet 
face, for Anna McCabe was as lovely a woman as you 
would meet anywhere from Creelabeg to Athery. It 
seemed such a pity to see her taken and a little girl of two 
years left alone behind her! It was sad enough when John 
himself was claimed by the swift waters of the Deel, but 
it seemed the very crown and completion of sorrow when 
the mother had to answer' the summons. However, 
there is no use gainsaying the will of a wise God. 

Dolores was eight years old, when Father John came 
to Creelabeg. She lived with her grandmother, Mrs. 
James Egan, just at the edge of the village, while the 
farm below Progue's Point was ''let" to one John Sulli- 
van from Drunmore. She was nine short years when she 
injured her spine while lifting a bucket of water back at 
Feeney's well. The doctors went again and again and 
explained her trouble to be due to one cause today and 
to another tomorrow; but for all their visits and ex- 
planations Dolores remained the same white-faced, frag- 
ile child. Then Father John said to her grandmother: 

''Mrs. Egan, let the doctors go for the present. She 
doesn't improve any under their care; maybe God doesn't 
want her to get well for some wise purpose of His own." 



Dolores 63 

That was why the doctors ceased visiting and writing 
prescriptions, and that was why Dolores sat in the sun 
all the early part of the day when the sun was warm. 
Mary Condon, who had gone to the Nuns' school in 
Ardee for several years, gave her lessons in reading, 
writing, grammar, history, plain and fancy sewing every 
morning. Dolores had a quick mind that took in a truth 
with ease and retained it for always; so when she reached 
her fifteenth year she was still white-faced and fragile, 
but notably well informed. Many a summer morning 
on his way out from the village to the green country he 
loved. Father John lingered with Dolores where she sat 
beside the door in the warm sunlight. One day he asked: 

"Dolores, what are you reading?" 

"Ninety-Eight." 

"Ninety-Eight! That's a battle chant, and you're no 
soldier, my Dolores." 

"No, but the heart of a soldier is in me," she cried, 
her eyes shining blue below her wan forehead. "Am 1 
to read it?" 

"Ay, 'tis battle. Yes, read; it makes the heart heavy 
because it recalls great, sad moments on which hung des- 
tinies; but go on, read anyhow, and put fire into it, 
Dolores." 

Ah, then you should have heard her flinging defiance 
at cowards from her chair in the sun: 

"Who fears to speak of Ninety-Eight? 

Who blushes at the name? 
When cowards mock the patriot's fate 
Who hangs his head for shame?" 



64 Memory Sketches 

Ah, and you should have heard the low plalntlveness 
to quicken tears as she read: 

''Some on the shores of distant lands 

Their weary hearts have laid, 
And by the strangers' heedless hands 

Their lonely graves were made; 
But though their clay be far away 

Beyond the Atlantic foam, 
In true men like you men 

Their spirit's still at home." 

''That will do, my child, that will do," said the priest 
when Dolores had finished the poem,. 

"What else do you do besides reading?" he asked pre- 
paring to continue his walk. 

"Sometimes I write letters to a few friends." 

"Ay; but that doesn't fill the day. Isn't there anything 
else?" 

"Not much else. Father. Sometimes I sew a little — 
but there isn't so much of that to be done." 

"Quite so. But you'd have time to do sewing, or, say, 
fancy work if you got it?" 

"Oh, surely, Father. 'Tis what I'm waiting and pray- 
ing for — a little more to do." 

Two weeks later Sister Margaret of the Nuns' School 
at Ardee called to see Dolores. She was a pleasant 
woman, midway in life, whose sympathies were spent on 
the poor and suffering. 

"Dolores, you're always in the summer here." 
Dolores rested her eyes for a moment on the nun's face 
and smiled as she answered: 



Dolores \ 65 

''Not always, Sister. Often the mist that gathers at 
the base of Progue's Point remains all the day and then 
the sun never shows. Besides, the south-west wind brings 
the rain sometimes, and I must stay inside then." 

"Well, when 'tis raining, or when the fog doesn't steal 
off to the sky by way of Progue's Point, let there be 
summer in your heart. No matter how dark the day 
we can keep light and warmth there." 

"The nuns can, who are so near God," answered the 
sick girl suppressing a sigh. 

"Yes, and you can — and everybody can. Being a nun 
doesn't put you in the seventh Heaven." 

"Maybe not, but nuns seem always so happy." 

"They have their crosses too, child." 

The admission that, even to those who live away from 
the world and its temptations, suffering comes, consoled 
Dolores because she felt less alone. Good people are 
always happy to share their joys with others, but there is 
a sense of comfort In feeling that they can share their 
sorrows with people also. 

"Dolores," said Sister Margaret before leaving, "I 
have brought you some sewing and fancy work. It will 
help to keep you busy, and when we're busy we're less 
alone." 

The girl's eyes brightened. She had no need to say 
her thanks; her happy face spoke them for her. Father 
John never told Dolores that It was he who got Sister 
Margaret to secure the fancy work to keep her fingers 
busy, because Father John never published his good 
deeds. His chief purpose was to render service; the serv- 
ice rendered he gave his thought to other work. 

One day in late Spring Mike's Mikeen cut his finger 
while trimming the hedge at the end of Father John's 



66 Memory Sketches 

garden. Straightway he made for the edge of town 
where Dolores sat sewing. 

''Dolores, 'tis kilt I am!" exclaimed MIkeen. 

''You don't look It," Dolores assured him, her eyes full 
of laughter. 

"But I'm bleedin', girl; bleedin' powerful!" 

"Let me see." 

Shutting his, eyes tight lest he jnlght witness the 
horror, MIkeen presented his bleeding finger. The cut 
was deep but not alarming. 

"I'll fix It for you," said Dolores, with rare confidence. 

"I don't think you can," said MIkeen. "I believe I 
must get the docther." 

"Nonsense. Don't I know?" 

"Ay, maybe; but I'm afeerd." 

Presently Dolores had strips of white cloth and a 
mysterious ointment. She cleansed the wound while 
MIkeen kept his eyes on the horizon exclaiming, "Ou I" 
and "murther!" and "'tis terrible entirely!" 

But when the wound was cleansed and the flow of 
blood stopped he forgot his horrors and said: 

"Dolores, an' I was goln' to marry I'd marry you." 

"Be off with your assurance!" cried Dolores, her eyes 
laughing again. 

"An' why wouldn't I?" asked MIkeen. 

"An' why wouldn't you!" she echoed. "Well, you 
wouldn't, because I wouldn't first." 

"Faith, thin, you might go farther and fare worse." 

"Be off I tell you! And I tell you again, be off!" 
cried Dolores giving his hand a healthy prod of her 
needle. 

"Murther, girl, murther! Sure 'tis into the bone you 
druv it." 



Dolores 67 

'' 'Tis into your heart I'll be sending it, I'm thinking." 

''Ah, I'll say nothin' thin, 'cept to go to th' other side 
o' the road whin I see you comin'." 

''Yes, and go back now to the priest's garden and be 
glad I didn't make your finger worse than 'twas." 

"That was why I didn't say anythin' till you were 
'bout finished." 

Dolores laughed, and Mikeen grinned comprehend- 
ingly. 

"Well, I'm goin'." 

"Go !" she comm^anded with a grand wave of the hand. 

"But just the same, an' there's a girl I know, not 
sayin' who she is or nothin', but just the same, an' I was 
goin' to marry I'd marry her." 

"Be off now — yourself and your blarney!" 

A month later Mikeen stopped before Dolores' chair 
on his way to Ardee. 

"Dolores," he said, " 'tisn't that I'm sayin' anythin' 
or manin' anythin', but I know a fine boy as says, an' he 
was goin' to marry he'd marry a nice girl as he knows." 

Long after Mikeen had continued on his journey the 
laughter that brought the tears to Dolores' eyes had not 
yet died down. 

Of course, I needn't tell you Dolores never married 
Mikeen. She sat in the sun when the sun was warm; 
but when the rain followed the wind from the southwest 
or when the mist lingered around the base of Progue's 
Point she tried hard to keep the sun in her heart. Yet 
not altogether; for she shared the sun that was in her 
heart with others whose lives were mostly in shadow. 



IX 
A GLIMPSE OF THE SEA 

WE NEVER referred to the Sunday Instruction 
of the children as ''Catechism," ''Sunday 
School," "Religious Instruction" or "Christian 
Doctrine." It always went by the Indefinite name, 
"Classes." Of the classes there were two, three or more, 
depending on the number of children. In Creelabeg we 
had Classes between first and second Mass, whereas 
down at Athery and up at Ardee they never took place 
till after last Mass. It was Father John himself who 
made the change, and we prayed our dear Lady herself 
to bless him for It. You see last Mass usually began at 
noon, which, with the sermon and, maybe, Benediction 
lasted an hour and a half. Classes followed for another 
hour; and by the time you were home and had dinner It 
was half-past three o'clock. So you missed half the hurd- 
ling or the football match or the regatta or the field 
sports or whatever other Sunday diversions might be on. 

Classes were taught by the schoolmaster, the school- 
mistress, the assistants and the monitors. The boys were 
graded In semicircles on St. Joseph's side of the chapel, 
the girls on the Blessed Virgin's side. We never sat-* in 
fact our chapel had no pews except In the gallery. 

After Classes were well under way Father John came 
out from the sacristy and spent some minutes with each 
division. Sometimes he asked questions, sometimes he 
explained a doctrine or a practice of the Church; or 
maybe he told us a story about an Irish saint of whom 



A Glimpse of the Sea 69 

we had never heard, but, who, no doubt, occupies some 
secluded nook In Heaven. 

"And now, James," he said to Jamie Hackett, only 
he would never say ''Jamie," ''what Is forbidden by the 
Fifth Commandment?" 

"Murther, quarrelling and revlnge," answered Jamie. 

Father John had a heart of iron when It came to mis- 
pronouncing words; It was one of the seven deadly sins 
against language. He turned to Mr. Sullivan. 

"Why will these boys, all our people In fact, commit 
crimes against pronunciation. Why, for example, will 
they call 'm-u-r-d-e-r' — 'murther'?" 

"No doubt It is the retention of the old Irish sounds. 
English Is only our stepmother tongue. Our mother is 
dead." 

Now Father John liked Sullivan. They were both of 
an age, both had like tastes, and both were essentially the 
same in politics. 

"My dear Sullivan," said the priest in an aside, 
"you're singularly brilliant today." 

"The effect of your sermon this morning, my Father," 
answered the teacher. 

"Man, you flatter!" 

"Nay, my Father; we may flatter mediocrity. Great- 
ness we praise." 

"That's enough!" 

Resuming his Instructions: 

"James, how do you pronounce m-u-r-d-e-r ?" 

"Murther," James repeated. 

"No, no! What do you call the crime of killing 
somebody — a landlord, a policeman or an emergency 
man?" 

"Murther." 



70 Memory Sketches 

"Listen ! 'Tis not mux-th-tv ; tis mur-<i-er." 
"Yeh, sure, 'tis aqual so he kills him, if he's a land- 
lord, a peeler, or an emergency man," said Jim Donnelly 
to Johnny Magee as both waited outside the chapel gate 
for last Mass. 

''Whist, or we'll all be murthered if he hears you," 
cautioned Johnny. 

Well, at last Jamie got his tongue to say ''murder" 
instead of "murther" and Father John visited the other 
classes. He had a word of praise for any bright lad who 
answered promptly and with coherence. He encouraged 
originality, oftentimes preferring a boy to word a 
truth after his own manner than after the manner of 
the book. He had his pockets full of coppers for the 
very young children, giving a penny and a word of praise 
to those who deserved, and very often to those who 
did not. Then when the time came to vest for the last 
Mass he said in his gentlest manner. 

"Well, good-by now, children. You have been to 
Mass and to Classes; you have prayed to God, and have 
tried to learn a little more about Him. So you may 
spend the rest of the day in the sun." 

Mr. Sullivan offered up the "Hail Mary"; we an- 
swered the "Holy Mary," and went along the roads or 
across the fields to our homes. 

One never forgets a Monday in mid-June when 
Father John gave us all such a surprise as no boys or 
girls in all Ireland ever received before. 

"Children," he announced shortly after entering the 
school, "you have been so regular at Classes and studied 
so hard all through the long winter, I'm going to take 
you down the river next Wednesday to the Shannon and 
then on to the sea." 



A Glimpse of the Sea 71 

Joy for the news made us dumb. Our eyes grew large 
for wonder and delight, but we did not utter a syllable. 
Then Mr. Sullivan said ever so kindly: 

''Boys, aren't you forgetting your manners? Have 
you nothing to say?" 

Ah, indeed we had, but the words were choked down 
In our hearts somewhere and would not come ! The best 
we could do was to murmur 

'Thank you. Father!" 

It made no difference. Our dear priest understood 
us; he knew what we would say, if the words only came. 

You should have been with us that morning when we 
took the excursion boat at Creelabeg quay for the Shan- 
non and the sea. The day — ah, one never forgets that! 
Just as if the kind God had set it apart over all the years 
especially for us ! It was so calm, every green leaf on the 
maples back in the chapel yard lay motionless in the heat; 
the smoke from the mill chimney climbed straight up till 
it vanished near the blue heavens; the court-house clock 
rang nine, and every stroke came to us unmixed with 
any other sound. The boat, given to Father John for 
the day by the Limerick Steamboat Company, proved to 
all the children a dream and a vision. There she lay, 
asleep, like a child, on the lap of the tide, her single 
smokestack breathing softly. Around her keel the in- 
coming water babbled in the language of its mother, the 
sea. How white and prim and shining our boat looked 
under the golden sun which God loaned us especially for 
our journey! Coming down the quay we notice Father 
John and Mr. Sullivan and, behind them, the schoolmis- 
tress and a monitor. These are to keep patient watch 
over us until we get back home again. 



72 Memory Sketches 

Now we glide down the Deel flush with the tide. 
Trees, bending down over the banks on either side, rush 
by us as we speed along; shrubs, growing gardens, toiling 
men, houses, hills out of which gray rocks are protruding 
— all move in the opposite direction, and we with staring 
eyes and half-open mouths watch them as they go. The 
banks grow more apart as we near the Shannon and a 
soft wind blows in from the sea. The two rivers co- 
mingle and flow united to the west. To the north, over 
the great stretch of water, we see the hills of Clare. 
Whitewashed houses, red gardens and growing crops are 
seen indistinctly through the haze. And then, after two 
hours' ride, down the wide Shannon, we come upon the 
sea! 

"There she is, as old as time!" said Father John to 
Mr. Sullivan as they both stood at the railing. 

"And she is chanting too," said the teacher, as the 
boom of breaking waves came to us. 

"Ay; there's no pause to her chant. Earth changes 
her face with the years, but the sea — ah, the sea is God's 
unchanging mirror yesterday, tomorrow and always." 

Then he quoted Lord Byron's couplet: 

"Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow : 
Such as creation's dawn beheld thou rollest now." 

What a vision to us, who had never seen it before, 
was that vast space of rolling water spread out before us, 
rising to the line of the horizon and then disappearing! 
What a sense of awe we felt as we approached nearer and 
nearer! But after we left the boat and walked over the 
fine, white sand we forgot our terrors. The sea that 
day was a friend, big but not menacing, that quickened 



A Glimpse of the Sea 73 

dreams in young fancies. While the children played in 
the sand or waded where the water was shallow, Father 
John and Mr. Sullivan sat on the edge of a cliff a short 
distance to north. The priest took off his hat and ran 
his fingers through his hair. 

''Sullivan, why is it that the sea calls us with the voice 
of a siren ? Why is it she draws us like the magnet draws 
the steel?" 

''The mystery in her," answered Sullivan. 

"Man, you answer oracle-fashion. 'The mystery in 
her,' you say. But isn't there mystery in the mountains, 
in the wide plains, in the heavens set with stars?" 

"Yes, but we see them often — always. The ocean, 
once — like today. It is a vision, the joy of surprise, 
"Like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes 
He stared at the Pacific — and all his men 
Looked at each other, with wild surmise — 
Silent, upon a peak in Darien." 

"Perhaps you're right, my dear Sullivan. Maybe if 
you and I were living right here within sight and hearing 
of the gray old ocean we wouldn't have the rapture we're 
having now." 

Far out, where the meeting of the sea and sky hid a 
vaster vision of waters, an ocean liner moved lazily to 
westward. 

"Maybe she's taking the men and women of our race 
to the land of opportunity, America," mused the school- 
master as he watched the great ship vanishing behind the 
silver haze. 

"The land of opportunity, probably; but also the 
land of unrest. Do not make the mistake, my dear Sulli- 
van, of so many: the mistake of measuring sense against 
spirit; the material things of the world against what St, 



74 Memory Sketches 

Paul calls 'the glories, that are to come.' Many a man 
of our race," — and here Father John waxed warm as he 
always did when a truth impressed him, — "many a man 
of our race has gone to America in the steerage, who in 
ten years came back first-cabin with the jingle of gold 
in every pocket. But let not that impress you. His 
body was in the steerage going; his soul, perhaps, was 
in the steerage when he returned. I'm tired hearing of 
what America has done for our race. What has she 
done? Given occupation for a wage, certain conven- 
iences of life, larger freedom, possibly, here and there. 
What has she received? Men and women schooled in 
faith, observant and receptive ; men with a keen sense 
for the niceties of life, adapting themselves readily to the 
conditions in which they find themselves; women, not 
grand in society elegance to be sure, but fair in that 
chastity for which they are held in distinction forever. 
Heart, and gentleness, and high courage, and vision, and 
love of law, and piety, and the virtues of the chimney 
corner are more important to the well-being of a country 
than are railroads linking ocean to ocean, or the tele- 
gram which is as swift as our thinking, or miles of tun- 
nel, or the corn-exchange 1 Ireland has given to America 
her men and her women and America is richer. America 
has given to Ireland's men and women wealth and oppor- 
tunity and, in a sense, a broader horizon. Some of 
these men and women have risen to eminence in that new 
world out in the west; but the sweet Faith that has made 
our people the race of eternity — sometimes they lose 
that. They have gathered in the wealth of time, but are 
robbed of the riches of Heaven. I'm not finding fault 
with America, mind you. Only, too often we are re- 
minded of all that we receive; too seldom we get a word 



A Glimpse of the Sea 75 

of thanks for all we give, or a word of sympathy for all 
we lose, after we have given. Man, listen! This land 
is large enough for all — only a blundering government 
has trampled on its riches for three hundred years! Sul- 
livan, I could spend the rest of my life collecting the 
broken pieces of Ireland's might-have-beens." 

The ship to west had passed beyond the line of the 
horizon. The priest and the teacher looked in the di- 
rection whence she had vanished. 

''She's gone," murmured Sullivan. 

'*Ay, gone, bearing those brothers and sisters of ours 
to where the snow lingers till mid-June, to where the cac- 
tus is in bloom the winter through." 

That evening, as we steamed up the Deel against the 
returning tide. Father John said to a group of us: 

''Children, how do you like the sea?" 

"I like the sound of the waves," answered Johnny 
Noonan. 

"An' 'tis so big and goes so for away till it meets the 
sky!" murmured Mary Shea. 

"An' it rises and falls like trees in the wind," added 
Mary Shea's little sister, Anna. 

"The young dreamers, they have it already, the vivid 
fancy of the Celt. It is his strength," mused Father John. 
Then in a moment he added somewhat sadly: "And his 
weakness." 



' i X 

BOGARA FEH 

MAURICE DEMPSEY was his real name. 
"'Bogara Feh" was the name he went by. He 
was a prim man well on to seventy, wore a 
frieze coat, brown trousers and a well-laundered collar 
that fell neatly over a black tie. On week days he sat 
on a wooden bench outside his grocery store, unless he 
were busy back of the counter with a customer. Some- 
times he prefaced a statement with the phrase ''As I'm 
an honest man," for no reason that we could think of 
except, perhaps, to add solemnity to what he proposed 
saying. 

"An' why mightn't I say, 'I'm an honest man' just 
as well as Bogara Feh?" Mike's Mikeen asked Father 
John one day, while digging August potatoes in the 
priest's garden. 

"You might, only it would be what the critics of the 
drama call, ' out of character' — just as if we were to 
represent Dean Swift saying the Rosary." 

"O faix, I don't know about that at all, nor about 
Dane Swift aether. But, anyhow, I call myself an hon- 
est man." 

"Not all that cry, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter into the 
Kingdom of Heaven," quoted Father John. 

"Manin' what?" asked Mikeen with the quizzical look 
that never failed to awaken laughter in the priest. 

"Meaning, that not every self-justified Pharisee shall 
sit with the elect in the house of multitudinous mansions." 



Bogara Feh 77 

''Yerra, faith, If you talked like that when announc- 
In' the Stations or the Aesther collection you wouldn't 
get a hapurth at all. But I'll Ingage your Reverence Is 
much plainer thin." 

Well, Bogara Feh was a link that held together the 
life of our own day with the life of the long ago. A 
sort of seer he seemed, come out of the past, enveloped 
In the mists of legend and battle chant and bardic tale. 
When his gentle eyes looked up at you from below his 
great, gray eye-brows, you would think some song- 
maker from Brian's palace of KIncora had survived 
somehow over the long, changing years. 

As you must have surmised already, Bogara Feh was 
a special favorite of Father John. A man of vision and 
temperament and quick fancy has a fondness for what- 
ever awakens dreams. Many an afternoon, when the 
flags of the foot-path were warm under the sun, the 
priest spent an hour sitting on the wooden bench with 
the kindly old man. 

'' 'Tis a brave race of ours, Father John," said 
Bogara Feh. 

"Ay brave, but not wisely brave," corrected the priest. 
''Not brave with keen leadership, nor brave with re- 
straint." 

''We have fought thim well. Father John." 

"In bits and scraps, yes; a dash here and a flash 
there; In Wexford a little. In Kildare a little; some spirit 
at Limerick, and a rainbow of promise when the men of 
the north were reviewed on College Green. Fought 
well, — yes ; but organized without system and led without 
calmness or vision." 

"As I'm an honest man. Father John, I ask your par- 
don; for I must beg to differ." 



78 Memory Sketches 

" 'Tis all a matter of opinion, and you have a right 
to yours." 

''Ay so, an' thank you. Father John. Well, now, 
take Lisnadthula near Ballyannan in the forties. We 
had a laether thin, an' we had the spirit, an'^ as I'm an 
honest man, we had the fight in us — only there was no 
fight." 

''Tell it all to me and I'll be the better judge," re- 
quested the priest who was eager to hear the old man's 
narrative. 

"In Lisnadthula it was, — in the forties. We were a 
hundred an' fifty min, an' a captain an' two sergeants an' 
a bugler, an' the man with the flag. The sojers were in 
the barracks at Lisnadthula an' the boys wanted to storm 
the place and take the town. The whole county was In 
a bad timper at the time, so the sojers were stationed 
with us for a year. We wanted the town, for 'twas our 
town an' the town of our fathers, an' we didn't want red- 
coats marching up an' down its streets with their high 
boots an' spurred heels. Fagin it was — our captain — 
who marched us eight by eight down Moylan's road 
under the moon. We had no guns, but we had pikes 
which we carried on our shoulders; an' we had ne'er a 
belt nor a sword aether, 'cept the captain an' the two 
sergeants. We stopped at the edge o' the town when the 
captain said, 'Halt!' Then he spoke to us, and his 
words were these: 'Min o' Lisnadthula, 'tis for us to fight 
an' drive the sojers out o' the barracks before to-mor- 
row mornin'. We'll surround the buildin' an' whin I give 
the order, d'ye charge. Now march on!' Well, we 
marched till we reached the gate ladin' to the yard 
where the sojers drilled. We silenced the sintry, marched 



Bogara Feh 79 

through an' surrounded the buildin'. Our captain struck 
the door with the hilt o' his sword. 

*' 'Who's there?' says the man inside. 

" 'Open !' says our captain with a voice like thunder. 

"Well, the man inside opened an' our captain says 
to him: 

" 'Surrinder !' 

" 'How many are ye?' he asks. 

" 'How many are we, is it, eh? We're one hundred 
and fifty strong!" 

" 'Yeh,' says the man inside, 'we're only fifty here.' 

" 'Thin surrinder!' says the captain again. 

"Well, they surrindered that night — the fifty o' thim 
— and marched out the gate, their captain leadin', an as 
I'm an honest man, they wint the road eastward to Lim- 
erick. We followed thim to the Ferry bridge, where we 
left thim an' came back home." 

There was a long pause until Father John asked: 

"And then?" 

"Thin those they could find of us were arrested two 
days later an' two hundred sojers were placed in the 
barracks by the ind o' the week." 

"Well, then, what was the good of the exploit?" 
queried Father John. 

"The good of it? Didn't we drive thim out of the 
town an' didn't we do it without sheddin' their blood?" 

"Ay," answered Father John in his loveliest manner, 
"but didn't they come back to town again without shed- 
ding your blood?" 

"But wasn't there glory in it — drivin' thim out ahead 
of us?" 

"Was there?" 

"Was there! Yeh, of course there was." 



80 Memory Sketches 

"One hundred and fifty driving fifty is not such a 
striking example of prodigious valor," said Father John 
with keen irony. 

"Well, we did it anyhow, an' 'tis aequal now, for 'tis 
all over." 

"Ay, 'tis over indeed — if it ever was." 

The latter part of the sentence was hidden below the 
surface of language as sometimes a stretch of stream is 
hidden below the sands; hence the old man was not of- 
fended. Then the priest placed forefinger and thumb to 
his chin in a characteristic way and watched a white 
cloud drifting lazily to northward. 

"O Ireland," he said in the tone he always used when 
his heart was full, "if only all your hopes saw fulfillment, 
what a fair nation you would be now!" 

"You're lonesome like. Father John," said Bogara 
Feb, looking at the priest with sympathy. 

"Thinking saddens a man." 

"Ay, 'specially if a man is lonesome like. 'Tis the 
same way with me too. I get sad sometimes sitting out 
here on the binch thinkin' o' Mary." 

"Mary?" 

"Ay, that's my woman dead an' gone — God rest her! 
— years before your Reverence came to us. An' as I'm 
an honest man. Father John, 'tisn't the same since she 
wint. She was sick a week an' a day, an' thin one night 
'bout tin o'clock the Banshee began acroonin' back there 
where you see the ould gable covered with ivy." 

The priest saw through the open back-door the wall 
covered with a thick matting of ivy vines around which 
noisy sparrows quarreled. 

"She crooned an' wailed for three nights; thin the 
third night, all of a sudden, 'bout eleven o'clock, a wind 



Bogara Feh 81 

came moanin' down from the Ballyadan hills an' shook 
off every leaf from the ivy out there. The Banshee's wail 
rose above the wind sometimes, and sometimes it fell 
below an' sometimes her voice joined in with the voice 
of the wind. Mary died at twelve that night, an' the 
heart in me nearly broke to see her so white an' still. 
The roar of the wind died down after she died and the 
Banshee's wail became low an' soft an' far away like, 
till it died out erttirely whin the day was breakin'. But 
an' whin it comes Christmas eve, at midnight, she always 
appears an' cries a dhras for Mary that's gone, an' for 
me that's waitin' my turn." 

''That's what we're all doing — waiting our turn." 
"Ay, waiting in line — like goin' to Confession." 
There was a long pause. The white cloud still floated 
in the north and the sparrows scolded around the matted 
ivy. 

"Did you know Father Madigan of Listownvarna, 
Father John ?'-' 

The priest shook his head. 

"No, of course, you didn't. 'Tis thirty-five years now 
since he died. His grave is back in the chapel yard at 
Listownvarna, — the west side o' the yard it is, under an 
oak that's a hundred years old. 'Tis a year ago now 
since I stood above where he's sleepin' in the shadow of 
the oak. An' as I'm an honest man. Father John, the 
tears ran down my face thinkin' o' him. Ah, Father 
John, 'twas he was the laether o' min! Once, whin the 
sheriff an' tin peelers came all the way from Knockderrig 
to evict Mrs. Danahar, a widow o' the parish, who was 
down with the typhoid faever, Father Madigan met thim 
at the door o' the little house." 

" 'We must obey the law,' says the sheriff. 



82 Memory Sketches 

'' 'The law of life cpmes before the law o' the land,' 
says Father Madlgan. 

" 'I have my orders and my orders are to have the 
door locked on an' empty house before sundown.' 

" 'Who gives you your orders?" 

" 'They come from the high-sheriff?' 

" 'An' mine come from the high God. God com- 
mands me to save this life which He gave.' 

" 'Move away from the door!' commanded the sheriff. 

" 'I can not. I must save this life. God has set me 
here between this woman an' you.' 

" 'Remove him!' said the sheriff to the peelers. The 
peelers never stirred. 'Remove him!' the sheriff roared. 
The peelers remained where they were. 'Then, you 
cowards, by the Lord, I'll do it!' But he didn't; he 
stood rooted to the ground where he was. 

"'Evict her now! See, the door is open!' an' the 
priest flung wide the half-door. 

"But they never moved; they were tied to the ground. 

" 'Why is this done?' asked the sheriff all atremblin'. 

" 'The law of life is above the law of man. The 
mandates of the high God come before the mandates 
of the high-sheriff.' 

"That was how Father Madigan — God rest him! — 
saved the life o' Mrs. Danahar when she was down 
with the typhoid faever." 

Going out through the quiet country on his afternoon 
walk a little later Father John was thoughtful and 
grave. 

"When so-called Progress comes our way," he 
mused, "Dolores and Mike's Mikeen and Magee, the 
post-boy, and Bogarai, Feb, children of pain and laughter 
and love and dreams will pass away and be forgotten. 



Bogara Feh ' 83 

We shall have meat Inspection, a better breed of cattle, 
a train to Shanagolden, and county supervisors to tell 
us how many germs we consume with every spoonful of 
soup. We shall have noisy officials inhaling the breath of 
the rose for microbes, and sipping the dew of the clover 
to find If It thins the milk of the Durham cattle. They 
will have us solicitous for what we shall eat and what 
we shall drink, hoping that we may live longer, whereas 
we should live more. Ay, some day they'll sterilize 
Bogara Feh's dreams lest some ghostly microbe of Brian's 
vanished age may still survive!" 

When Father John returned from his walk, Mike's 
MIkeen was trimming the garden hedge. 

"Father John," he said, straightening himself, ''I 
don't like the summer half as well as I do the winther." 

"Why?" 

"Well, because In summer the day is so long, the 
dark Is powerful slow comin'. 

''Quite so; but the day is for labor, — and labor is 
sweet." 

"Ay so; but an' you put four spoons o' sugar into 
your tay 'twill be too sweet. An' labor may be too sweet 
likewise if you put sixteen hours o' daylight into It." 

"Ah, perhaps you would like to be the eleventh hour 
man of the Gospel then?" 

"I would. If the boss wouldn't suspect I was waltin' 
an' give me the job in the mornin'." 

"We must speak by the card or equivocation will undo 
us," quoted Father John as he went leisurely along the 
box-lined gravel walk to his house. 



XI 
THE WHITE WAKE. 

MARY MADIGAN was leaving for Australia, 
and a "white wake" always preceded a leave- 
taking just as a ''black wake" preceded a burial. 
Into the white wake there entered laughter and tears; 
somewhat like a spring day it was, when the wind runs 
high and sunshine follows on the heels of shadow. 

As a sort of preliminary to it all came Mary's trunk 
out from Limerick, which caused Mrs. Madigan and her 
two other girls to weep softly, just as if the trunk were 
a coffin. One should not blame them either, since often 
the sea made the separation as complete as the grassy 
mound in the graveyard. Then as they folded and put 
in some little keepsake they wept anew. 

Mary was to depart Tuesday morning at six o'clock. 
The Saturday previous she went to Confession, and re- 
ceived Holy Communion at first Mass on Sunday. How 
sweet and pure she looked as she knelt at the railing, the 
Bread of Life in her heart! Small wonder it was that 
half the parish was heavy-hearted to see her going from 
the dear land of settled quiet to the strange far-away 
land of unrest and adventure! And you could hardly 
blame the boys, kneeling over near the holy water font, 
if they stole a glance at her where she prayed below 
the great window to the south through which the sun 
came that morning. Mary went into the sacristy after 
Mass, which explained why Father John was late visiting 
Classes. 

84 



The White Wake 85 

''Father, I come to say goodby," said Mary simply. 

"And Mary, I wish it was 'I'm glad to be home 
again' you were saying instead." 

"Thank you. Father John, and I wish it too. In- 
deed, 'tis I would like to stay at home, if I could." 

"Ah, Mary, you're all going, all going, till in a few 
years only the sick and the old will remain. You are 
one of my girls — as good as Ruth amid the sheaves ; 
ah, yes, it catches at the heart to see you go! The fields 
are green here, and heaven is blue and every stream has 
sunlight and song! No doubt, Mary, you're going be- 
cause you wish to better yourself; and I wish to God I 
could do something to keep you and all our boys and 
girls at home! But no. The rivers run idly to the sea 
and turn no mill-wheels; a million hands are waiting to 
serve, but greedy Capital affords no service. And so you 
must go like the rest. But promise me, Mary — 'tis the 
last time we'll ever meet here and therefore I ask all the 
more anxiously — promise me, you'll never turn back on 
your Faith, the Faith that alone can save. Will you 
promise?" 

"Father, I will always be true to that; always — with 
the help of God!" 

"Ay, with the help of God. And promise me you'll 
never forget your race, the race of saints and dreamers 
and bards and kings." 

"I won't forget; I promise you I won't." 

The girl caught some of the priest's emotion, for she 
spoke as if' pronouncing a vow. 

"God bless and keep|?^u, Mary! May the voyage 
be calm and may the ye^rs be many that follow; many, 
yes — and full of peace!" 



86 Memory Sketches 

Mary knelt down and Father John gave her his 
blessing. They shook hands and she went away. 

The priest stood at the sacristy door, folded his arms 
and looked across the flat country to the Ballyadan hills. 
The sun was on them that morning and a blue mist 
circled their base. 

''I believe the wild longing for El Dorado, for the 
land of the bush and the land of the prairie, has so taken 
hold of our people they would not stay here now, if 
this were a land of plenty." 

At Classes that morning, he asked little Mollie O'Neill : 

*'And what will you do, Mollie, when you're grown 
up?" 

''I'll go to New York to my Aunt," answered Mollie. 

"Even the children, hear the Siren," said Father John 
to Mr. Sullivan; but none of us understood what he 
meant. 

Well, they had the white wake at Madigan's at which 
Mary was, as they say, "the observed of all observers," 
like the bride at a wedding. Jim Donnelly was down 
from Progue's Point with his flute and Anna Cronan had 
her new melodeon. Jim played a dhras till he became 
tired and then Anna took up the music where Jim quit. 
There were three "full sets," an "orange and green," an 
"eight-hand reel," a "jig," a "hornpipe," and the "black- 
bird" by Jim Ahern. 

You who have never seen Irish dances or have your 
impressions of them from travesties reproduced on the 
stage have no worthy concept of what Irish dances 
really are. You, whose imagination pictures noise, 
riotous laughter, the slamming of feet on mud floors 
and frantic leaping into air thick and foul with tobacco 
smoke — you will not understand the poise, the rhythm 



The White Wake 87 

and the grace. You whose concept of motion is limited 
to the monotonous waltz and its present-day imitations 
will probably not sympathize with the more complex, 
more artistic, and exquisitely refined dances the Celt has 
evolved and made part of his contribution to the poetry 
of the world. No wonder the dreamer, the lover of the 
long ago, looks back and sighs for them. 

''Oh, the days of the Kerry dancing, 
Oh, for the ring of the piper's tune!" 

Well, when there came a pause to the dancing, Jim 
Ahern called across to Mike's Mikeen: 

''Yeh, Mikeen, have you e'er a song you could give 
us?" 

*'Yerra, where would I get a song I'd like to know? 
An' if I got one itself, I couldn't get the tune." 

''Yeh, and why not?" 

''Well, sure if I was to try to get the tune Father 
John would hear me where I'd be out in the garden, an' 
he'd come down an' chase me back to the river Deel to 
drown my voice." 

"Faith, Mikeen," ventured Jim Donnelly, "he might 
be glad to know you could sing, so he'd sind you up to 
the gallery with the choir." 

Well, Mikeen could not be coaxed to sing, and neither 
could Tom Hackett, who had a "sore throath," nor Jim 
Hogan who was "hoarse." Several encouraging voices 
urged Anna Morgan but Anna was bashful. So were 
Kathleen Burns and Margaret Magee. It seemed as if 
every most promising star must vanish out of the firma- 
ment of song when Jack Clancy, the weaver down near 
Athery, stood up and said : 

"If ye don't mind, I'm thinkin' of givin' ye a stave 
or two myself." 



88 Memory Sketches 

"That's talkin', Jack!" encouraged Mike Danahar. 
To say the truth about Jack Clancy, he was not one 
of the major prophets of song. 

"He dhrawls a good dael," was Jim Donnelly's 
whispered comment. 

"Yeh, he does indeed; an' he screeches kind o' when 
he goes up high like." 

"Ay so. But he gets thim started anyhow, so 'tis 
aequal." 

Well, Jack gave a few preliminary coughs for the 
purpose of clearing his throat, closed his eyes and, 
while swinging his head from side to side like a pendu- 
lum, sang: 

"In Australia's far off shore 
There is wealth for us in store 
An' pearls an' sparklin' diamonds galore, 
But if every grain o' sand 
Was a diamond in that land, 
I would still love dear old Ireland the more, 
Boys the more! 

I would still love dear old Ireland the more!" 
"Bravo, Jack," cried Dick Fitz from across the room. 
"Courage, Jack, an' rise it!" called John Hartigan. 
"Yera, don't mind thim. Jack, but save your voice," 
Mike's Mikeen advised. 

Jack had his owri way and his own time. To tell the 
truth, there was many a stanza that seemed to serve as 
a fitting conclusion to the song, but Jack went on and on 
letting no one into the secret of just when he would finish; 
and when he did finish everybody was taken by surprise. 
'"By gor," whispered Mikeen to Jim Donnelly, while 
murmurs of approval were heard all around, "by gor, 
Jack's song reminds me of Father Mahoney of Lurragah 



The White Wake 89 

when he used to preach. He'd say, 'Now, my brethren, 
let us do this' an' 'let us do that,' an' thin you'd get 
ready to kneel down thinkin' he was finishin' up; but 
whin you'd be sure he was through intirely, he'd begin 
all over." 

''You mustn't be talkin' about the priest, Mikeen," 
admonished Jim. 

"Yeh, who's talkin' about the priest I'd like to 
know? By gor, a man can't open his mouth to yawn 
these times but they'll say he's talkin' agin his neighbor." 

Other songs followed Jack Clancy's opening effort — 
songs of battle, songs of the hearth, songs of lov^e and 
romance, songs of the homesick heart; then dancing 
again, and refreshments, and subdued conversation, and 
silent weeping in quiet nooks, and at last the sun rising 
rose-red above the horizon just north of Progue's 
Point. 

The neighbors and friends leave the house and walk 
to Creelabeg station to await the end. Mary Madigan 
holds in her arms the little mother whom she may not 
see in this world any more; she kisses the rough brown 
face of her father many times; she kisses her brothers 
and her sisters whose faces are wet with tears. It is 
over at last, the sad leave-taking in the cool ^morning. 
Then Mary Madigan flings herself on the little couch 
below the window and sobs as if her heart must surely 
break. God help her, and God help all who must bid 
good-by to clustering shamrocks and to daisied earth! 
God help her and God help many others who look their 
last on Ireland when the Macgillicuddy Reeks vanish 
behind the haze! 

As the kind God would have it, Father John himself 
took the train that morning at Creelabeg for Limerick. 



90 Memory Sketches 

The parting at the station is simple and reserved: hand- 
shakes, kisses, quiet tears. There is a waving of hand- 
kerchiefs, a lifting of hats, good-bys and Godspeeds 
as the train pulls away! 

Father John and Mary occupied different ''carriages" 
and did not meet till they stood on the platform of the 
Limerick terminal station. The time was brief there, for 
Mary's train was due to leave in a few moments. 

**Have a brave heart, Mary," encouraged Father 
John, "and don't forget the people at home." 

'*I won't forget them. Father," said Mary through 
her tears. 

''Don't be afraid. You are wise enough to keep 
near God. There's the signal, Mary. Good-by and 
God bless you always!" 

"Father," said Mary, still crying softly, "God is 
very good to me. Your face is the last face I'll see that I 
know. I'll keep you not only in my memory, but in my 
heart as well." 

Long after Mary's train had passed out of sight 
on its journey southward Father John lingered on the 
platform. 

"Thirty years from now when she returns she'll be 
richer, more experienced. God grant she'll be only as 
good! ril be under the earth then, and may be she'll 
stand above my grave and tell her Australian children 
the days of her young life long, long ago at Creelabeg, 
in the years of Father John." 



XII 
THE MARTYRS. 

FATHER JOHN had the Irish priest's fondness 
for a horse. To want Is to have with some men, 
and so not many moons rose white above Bal- 
lyadan before our priest owned asi beautiful a black 
mare as you could meet anywhere along the road be- 
tween Creelabeg and Shanagolden. She had a white 
star on her broad forehead and two hind legs as white 
from knee to hoof as a blossomed hedge. 

''She's lovely," exclaimed MIkeen, shortly after 
Father John bought her from Maurice Condon when 
she was a three-year-old. 

To tell the truth, MIkeen did not know any more 
about horse values than he did about architecture, but 
the rogue knew that gentle eulogy of his horse would 
please our dear priest. He was holding the mare by 
the bridle rein at the time, while Father John was mak- 
ing ready for a short ride toward Knockadare where 
the bog lands stretch their lonesome length toward the 
sea. The mare looked at MIkeen, sniffed his coat sus- 
piciously and tossed her head grandly Into tlie sunlight. 

''MIkeen," she seemed to say, " 'tis I know your 
palaver — just to please the priest!" 

"Yerra, darlin', don't be hard on me," MIkeen 
whispered stroking her* velvet | neck. "Sure you're 
beautiful, an' I mane every word of It." 

Then she placed her head on the bouchal's shoulder 
and they became as "great" with each other as any 
horse and man could be. 

91 



92 Memory Sketches 

So you will understand now why Father John bought 
the three acres ^of upland hay just two fields below 
Ballyadan hills; you will see, too, why four tall men of 
the parish set to cutting the crop one glorious day In 
mid- June. 

The memory of a hay-field in Ireland lives longer 
with a man than the memory of a love or a battle. On 
the vast acres of Texas or amid the apple-orchards of 
Oregon, anywhere, when the odor of cut hay comes 
to you, comes also the memory of home and morning 
dew and mellow sun and a lark rising of a sudden and 
child talk and the low laughter of men. 

Well, the boys were cutting the hay: Jim Madigan, 
Tom Noonan, Dick FItz and Martin , Hogan, It 
would gladden your heart to watch their bent bodies 
swaying back and forth, as they went, one behind the 
other, In perfect time. It was a song without music. 
In grand opera they would call it the ''Chorus of the 
Mowers," probably, only the opera chorus would cut 
Imaginary hay with painted scythes. 

MIkeen was especially deputed by Father John "to 
tend" the men as they worked. That is, he brought 
their dinner, hurried to the spring In the next field for 
fresh water or ran down to the headland for one or 
the other's pipe and tobacco. When not so employed, 
he walked slowly on the cut field beside the mxcn, dodg- 
ing the shaft of a remark and letting one fly in return. 

About two in the afternoon, when the sun was the 
hottest, Jim Madigan observed: 

''MIkeen, there's no luck at all if you cut a field o' 
hay an' not have a little bottle o' porther." 

"But this Is the priest's field," answered MIkeen, 
"an' the pyshogiies have no power over him at all." 



The Martyrs 93 

" 'Tisn't Father John I'm manln', but us." 
**Ay; but he'll give ye his blessin', so 'twill be all 
aequal." 

"Yerra, but what about our drouth?" asked Hogan. 

*'Yeh, don't mind that, man, any more than you 
mind the systhone in your belt. Don't think of it at all; 
that's what I do." 

"So that's it, is it?" Hogan observed as he finished 
his swath. "But sure an' a man must mind it whin he 
has a drouth," he added as he walked leisurely back to 
begin anew. 

"Yeh, but the spring wather is great, man, when you 
do be dry like." 

"Oh, faith 'tis," replied Jim Madigan, " 'specially 
whin you havn't anything better." 

"An' besides," added Mikeen, "Father John is an 
out-an'-out timperance man entirely." 

"Yeh, sure we know that without your tellin' us," 
Dick Fitz remarked with obvious irritation. 

"O' course we do," agreed Noonan; "but, by gor, his 
reverence could give the rest of us somethin' even if he is 
timperance itself." 

"An' he will too," informed Mikeen cheerfully. 

"Will he raelly give us somethin', Mikeen?" Hogan 
asked with wide eyes. 

"He will — as sure as the day, he will." Mikeen spoke 
with finality. 

"Are you manin' 'tis porther he'll give us?" Tom 
Noonan stood up and looked at Mikeen. 

"Yeh, no, I wasn't thinkin' o' that." 

"Thin what was you thinkin'of?" Noonan began to 
call up before his imagination other beverages. 



94 Memory Sketches 

''Well, I was thinkin' may be 'tis the pledge he'd be 
givin' ye — the Father Matthew pledge." 

'Wisha the devil mind you, Mikeen — God forgive 
me! — with your old gab an' prate!" Hogan exclaimed. 

''Well, I'll ask him if ye say so." 

"An' you do, you won't be worth thruppence whin 
we get done with you," said Dick Fitz menacingly 

Just then Hogan saw Father John coming through 
the iron gate into the meadow. 

"By gor, boys, here's the priest himself," he cautioned. 

"Now is the time I'll tell him to give the pledge 
while ye're all here." 

"Yerra, my God, Mikeen, don't I Sure if he thought 
we drank a drop he'd kill us. Besides, 'tisn't worth 
while for the likes of us, we take so little anyhow." 
Hogan had just finished when Father John broke in with 
the customary Irish salutation, 

"God bless the work!" 

"An' you too. Father John!" they all answered 
softly, as they lifted their hats. 

Hogan looked at Mikeen appealingly but MIkeen's 
eyes were following a solitary crow that flew low toward 
the horizon. 

"By gor, 'tis hot, Father John," observed Mikeen. 

"Ay, but a mellowed and a tempered heat," Father 
John answered. 

Mikeen did not get the soundings of "mellowed" 
and "tempered," but that made no difference. 

" 'Tis mellowed and timpered, as you say; but 'tis 
hot all the same, Father John, 'specially in the open." 

"No doubt, for the land Is dry." 
"Ay' indeed, the land is dry, an' the min who work the 
land are dry, too." 



The Martyrs 95 

Hogan's eyes shot furtive daggers at Mikeen. 
Father John who understood Mikeen's drift appeared 
strangely dense. 

"And yet our land is singularly blessed with moisture. 
The rains fall plentifully from the skies, the mists come 
generously from the bounteous sea, everywhere rivers 
glide down the mountains to the plains. Our people 
should not suffer from thirst." 

The four men kept up their measured strokes but 
heard every word. Father John's language was some- 
what confusing to Mikeen, though he would not make 
such an admission for a score of worlds. 

"But, Father John, I tell you when a man is dry, he's 
dry." 

"That's a truism." 

"A thruism!" exclaimed Mikeen. "Yerra, you may 
well call it a thruism, Father John, an' two thrulsms, 
an' three thrulsms — when a man Is dry enough." 

Father John looked East toward Progue's Point to 
hide his laughter. 

"Under a stream of cold, clear water, fire will smoulder 
and die," mused Father John still looking toward the 
East. 

"Ay, 'twill Indeed," agreed his man-of-all-work. 

"And cool sparkling water will also put out the fire 
of thirst." 

"Ay, In a way.'* 

"Give me the man of our race" — and here our dear 
priest grew solemn as he always did when he stood in the 
presence of a great truth — "give me the man of our race 
who is not in the bondage of the thirst that kills and I will 
show you one who walks through fields of plenty." 



96 Memory Sketches 

"Malnin' the drink?'' asked Mikeen with that freedom 
begot of his position. 

"Ay, the drink. I tell you, Mikeen, and I tell you, 
men; the greatest enemy of the Irish people is the man 
who preaches the apostolate of meet, mingle and drink." 

The four mowers stood up and listened. 

"Men should know when to sthop," ventured Mikeen. 

"Men should, but in most cases they do not." 

"A little spirits lift up a people," still pursued Mikeen. 

"A spirited race doesn't need spirits for uplift; God's 

grace gives that," answered Father John aphoristically. 

Mikeen scratched his head and turned his eyes toward 

the horizon. Tim Hogan fingered the scythe-stone at 

his belt. 

"By Gor," ventured Hogan, "if a man would only 
know whin to lave it alone itself 'twouldn't be so bad 
entirely." 

"And what do you mean by that?" asked Father John, 
facing Hogan. 

"Oh, I mane. Father John, that some min can take a 
drink or two an' stop thin, an' go home an' be sober." 

"For the one that can, there are ten that can not. 
You're making a rule out of the exception." 

"Faith, 'twould be aequal so I'd be the exception," said 
Mikeen in an aside to Dick Fitz. 

Presently, Father John turned round and faced all four 
men. Then he asked softly, but with feeling: 

"You four men would die for Ireland, if dying would 
save her?" 

"We would, Father John, oh, by gor we would," 
answered Hogan for himself and the others. 

"And you would live for her too — live as clean, temper- 
ate men?" 



The Martyrs 97 

"We would," answered the four with emotion. 

''1 knew you would. That's why I asked. And to 
show my confidence in you, I will give you a chance to live 
for Ireland by joining the Creelabeg branch of the 
Temperance league next Sunday after first Mass. Be 
there. God bless you!" 

Father John walked South toward Ballyadan while the 
men stood speechless watching him as he passed along. 
"By gor, we're ruined!" exclaimed Hogan. 
"We are!" bemoaned Dick Fitz. 
"An' we'll have to take it, too," mused Madigan. 
"An' sure what's the use takin' the pledge whin we're 
sober already?" protested Noonan. 

"Ah, but maybe he'll forget it by Sunday," Hogan said 
hopefully. 

Dick Fitz looked at Hogan with apparent disgust. 
"He will in me eye! You wait till Sunday an' see." 
"Yeh, sure It's for ye're good anyhow, so its aequal,'* 
consoled Mikeen. 

"Wisha the devil mind you, Mikeen! for 'tis you that 
caused all the trouble!" exclaimed Hogan with feeling. 
" 'Twas; by gor, 'twas," said Dick Fitz. 
"Will we take it together or one by one?" asked Jim 
Madigan. 

"Boys," said Hogan solemnly, "since we're goin' to die, 
let us die like min — one by one." 

''Ay, like Allen, Larkin, an' O'Brien," Mikeen sug- 
gested. "An' after ye're dead like, I'll write a song 
about ye." 

"Let us be, Mikeen. You didn't lave us alone whin 
we were livin' ; at least let us be whin we're dead," 
Hogan admonished as he turned around to continue 
his toil. 



XIII 
THE GOING OF TOM CONNELLY 

AH, then 'tis we that were lonesome the day Tom 
Connelly took passage for America in late Sep- 
tember when all the woods were gold. Tom was 
as tall and as strong as Luga Laga, and as swift as Liath 
Macha, 'the Roan of the North.' For all, he spoke low 
and his ways were gentle. 'Twas small wonder we missed 
him and he the talk of the town, and the county beyond it 
for miles ! He was captain of the hurdling team for two 
years running when Creelabeg won the west county cham- 
pionship. Ah, 'twas he could drive the ball down the side 
line toward the goal of the opponents, while the cheers of 
all Creelabeg drowned out the noise of the train coming up 
from Foynes. Once when the boys were playing a match 
against Kildimo, Tom broke his hurly while backing up 
a play when the ball was in mid-field. There were cries 
of "Yerra, get him a hurly!" "O by Gor we'll be baten 
this day if they don't find one this minit!" 'Teh, hurry 
up!" "Isn't there e'er a hurly around the place at all?" 
Whether it was fate or circumstance or what not, at any 
rate, there was no hurly forthcoming and Tom had to 
stand as helpless as an elephant on an ice-field while the 
battle surged around him. Father John, who watched 
the game, took in the disaster and dispatched a boy to 
his house to have the housekeeper get his ash hurly out 
of the brown trunk in his sleeping-room. 'Twas a mem- 
ory of Blackrock. The boy returned with the memory; 
Tom ran out to the side line. 



The Going of Tom Connelly 99 

"Take It," said the priest, " TIs the brand Excallbur." 

"Ay," said Tom lifting his green cap by the peak as 
if he understood. 'Tis a way we Irish have of making 
ourselves at home in the sitting-rooms of art and learning. 

"And keep it always," added the priest. 

Tom's eyes grew large. "But sure if I break it, an' 
it the priest's !" 

" 'Twill be in battle I know, and that's honor." Tom 
was gone, his head in glory. The boys won that day. 
Many said it was because of Tom, who fought like 
Cuchulan must have fought in mid-river when the waters 
were red with the blood of battle. Tom said 'twas the 
priest's hurly. We cannot be sure. 

Well, Tom left us for America, his head full of 
dreams, and his heart full of sorrow. His going made 
a void in the village just as if a big sod of turf were 
taken out of the side of a reek. You missed him Sunday 
morning at the nine o'clock Mass; you missed him at 
the funeral, and he with the broadest shoulder to carry 
the coffin; you missed him in the spring when the sea- 
weed came; and oh, you missed him when the boys played 
the game, and he not there any more to call out, "Follow 
it up ! Follow it up, boys!" 

Tom was in America — out West. He got into the 
police force in a middle-sized town in the state of Ohio, 
which position he held with honor for four years. Ev- 
erybody knew the tall Irishman who directed traffic at 
the crossing. He had a kind word here and a laugh and 
a "how-do-you-do, ma'am," there until he was known and 
loved by big and little. 

Then, In the late winter, Tom got a cold which he 
didn't mind very much for he was strong and hearty. 
But it settled down in his lungs, and like a treacherous 



100 Memory Sketches 

serpent would not uncoil. He was taken from his board- 
ing-house to the hospital and the Sisters' gentle foster- 
ing. So there he lay on the bed like an oak tree blown 
down by a gale back at Shanagolden. Yet so gentle was 
he, through all the fever and delirium, a child could lead 
him. 

*'What did the doctor say about me?" he asked Sister 
Mark one morning after she and the physician had con- 
versed in low tones outside Tom's door. 

''What did he say?" echoed the Sister in order to se- 
cure time to frame an answer. 

"Ay!" 

''He said you are as well as could be expected." 

"As well as could be expected, is it?" 

"Yes." 

"Now, what's the use in talkin'. Sure I heard what 
he said, for all yer whisperin'." 

"Well, what did he say then?" asked the nun amused. 

"What did he say?" he echoed. "Well, he said, 'Tom 
will have a hard pull if he pulls through,' that's what 
he said." Which was literally correct. 

The day before he died Tom grew very restless. Sis- 
ter Mark sent for the priest who prepared the big police- 
man that was never to travel the beat any more. After 
the priest was gone Tom remained very quiet. 

"You know," he said to the Sister between the painful 
Teachings after breath, "Father Noonan, who just wint, 
is from my part at home. He gave me a thorough ex- 
amination, an' I'm ready to go now, whatever 'tis." 

Tom Connelly, large-limbed and big-hearted, the best 
hurler in Creelabeg, with a voice that was soft and a way 
that was gentle, died at eight o'clock in the morning, 
when a cold wind blew from the north. He was far 



The Going of Tom Connelly 101 

from home where the daisies shine star-like over the June 
fields, where the shamrocks lie hiding close to the breast 
of mother Ireland. But the same sweet Church — the 
Church of the tomorrow and the long ago — was beside 
him with her mystic administering, and the nuns — God 
bless them always ! — were at hand to keep the Crucifix 
to his lips and his head lifted, so his eyes could be turned 
toward home. 

Well, Tom's mother lived in a little house close to the 
boreen that ran beside the gardens and across the fields. 
And during all the sickness she waited and waited for the 
letter that did not come. Her heart was anxious; but 
the ship might be late, or his letter might have missed 
the mails by a day or, — well, there are so many reasons 
that come to one to explain away the unpleasant. But when 
the second week went by and the third, the patient mother 
grew anxious for her son. 

Every morning she went out to the gate to meet 
Johnny Magee, the post-boy. Johnny came along with a 
song In his mouth like a bird of passage. But when he 
got within sight of Mrs. Connelly's gate, the song In 
him. went down to his heart where It died away. 

''Good mornin', Johnny!" 

''Good mornin', Mrs. Connelly!" Then with a voice 
breaking for the pain that was catching her, she asked, 
"E'er a line from Tom?" 

"Wisha, nothin' today, Mrs. Connelly, though to- 
morrow may bring us better news." 

"God grant It, Johnny; God grant It, an' It be His 
holy will!" 

The days went — long, lonesome, monotonous days for 
the Irish mother whose love went off to a land she never 
saw. Ah, God help those Irish mothers who have sat 



102 Memory Sketches 

at their doors in the light of a million pale suns down 
all the wasting years from the beginning 'till now ! 

One day she met Father John back at Banagee bridge 
where he stood watching the river. It was a day of 
moods in mid March. The wind rose and fell in little 
gusts; the tree limbs wailed as they swayed back and forth 
like mourning women at a wake ; caravans of gray clouds 
moving across the sky veiled the sun betimes and dark- 
ened the gliding waters. On either side the river, newly- 
made drills stood waiting for the potato planting, while 
here and there heaps of seaweed rose black above the 
red earth. It was a day for a man to croon about a 
sorrow, or to dream of happy days when life was in 
the morning. 

*'Well, Mrs. Connelly," said the priest when the 
woman reached him, "and how are you today?" 

'Tm w^ell, thank you. Father John, praise be to the 
good God! Although 'tis a long time now since I had 
a line from Tom." 

"You don't tell me!" 

"Yes, Father, 'tis now goin' on three weeks since I 
had a letter, an' he always regular at writin' every week." 

"Perhaps he's sick, or maybe he has extra work to 
do?" suggested the priest. 

"I don't know v/hat 'tis. Father, only it makes me sad 
and sorry not to hear from him; an' I can't put him away 
from me, for he's in my thoughts by day, an' in my 
dreams by night." 

"Ay so ; but you mustn't let yourself break down think- 
ing of him. No doubt he's well where he is." 

"I hope so. Father; indeed I hope he is, whether 'tis 
livin' or dead he be. For if 'tis dead he is, O surely 
I want it to be well with him there." 



The Going of Tom Connelly 103 

Then the dear woman wept sweet, relieving tears, 
which the priest, who had a mother himself, did not try 
to restrain. When after a little, she slowly wiped her 
moist eyes with the handkerchief concealed beneath the 
gray shawl pinned at her breast, the priest said gently: 

*'Mrs. Connelly, the river below us that flows to the 
Shannon frees the land on either side from here to Castle- 
mahon of the water that soaks the red gardens and' lies 
stagnant in the hollow places. And so sorrow would He 
stagnant In the hollow places of our hearts if the good 
God did not give us the relieving river of tears." 

"Thim are good words, an' God bless you, Father 
John," the mother whispered as she kissed the hand out- 
reached to bless her. 

Four days later v/hen Johnny Magee came near Mrs. 
Connelly's gate, he took a letter out of his brown bag. 
''From the other side," he said simply. 

"Ay so ; but not his," Mrs. Connelly observed as she 
broke the seal. She handed the letter to the post-boy, her 
voice trembling. 

''Read It, Johnny asthore ; my heart Is hurtin' me." 
Johnny's eyes ran down the double page. Then he 
looked at the woman. 

"Yeh, let us hear it, Johnny bouchal! Whatever 'tis, 
it can't be worse than waitin'." 

"I can't," Johnny answered. ''I haven't the courage." 

"Ah, tell me quick, Johnny alanna. Sure, I promise 
to be brave whatever 'tis." 

"Well," said the post-boy huskily, " 'tis about him." 

"Tom?" 

"Ay." 

"Tell me, dear, or I'll die waitin'." 



104 Memory Sketches 

''Well, Tom is gone, Mrs. Connelly. 'Twas the pneu- 
monia did it, the letter says." 

'Tour manin' that Tom is dead?" the woman asked 
confusedly. 

"Ay," the postboy answered sadly. 

"Johnny, let me lean on your arm a minute, for I'm 
waek and the fields are runnin' around me." 

Gently, as a nurse would, Magee helped the trembling 
mother to a little stone bench beside the gate. She rested 
for a few moments, and though Johnny's duties called 
him, he had not the heart to go. 

"May be 'tis a drink of water would help you?" he 
suggested. 

"No, Johnny, tisn't that. But it came so sudden, for 
all that I was fearin' it, an' he away among strangers, an' 
me not by the side of him whin he w^int away." 

"Sure 'tis aequal," consoled the postboy, "for he died 
in the hospital with the nuns takin' care of him. An' 
he had the priest an' everything just as if he was at 
home." 

"Does the letter say that?" 

"Ay, an' 'tis Mary Nolan wrote it — she that used to 
live back near the five-mile road." 

"I remember Mary well, God bless an' keep her! But 
are you sure it says Tom had the priest?" 

"Ay, the day before he died." 

"Yeh, sure 'tis all aequal thin, as you say; an' Tom 
is better off. Thanks be to the good God who sint him 
the priest before he wint away ! 'Twould be nice o' course 
if 'twas up at Creelabeg graveyard he was sleepin'. But 
an' 'tisn't, may the earth lie aisy on him, beyant where 
he is!" 



XIV 
KNOCKANARE BY THE SEA 

IN EARLY April Father John took the morning train 
and went for a week's vacation thirty miles west to 
Knockanare. Why he took showery April rather 
than August, and why he selected Knockanare, a lonesome 
tract of bog land, rather than Kilkee, a summer resort on 
the Clare side of the Shannon, was beyond us entirely. 
But now after the reach of many years, when one under- 
stands our dear priest better, reasons are easy to find. 

You see Father John was a lover of remote places 
where there was no path beaten from the march of men. 
That was why he chose Knockanare. Then, in April, sun 
and shadow, wind and shower follow one another with 
such unfailing insistency that Father John had what he 
was accustomed to call the "weather of moods." 

Knockanare bogland begins on a rise of ground out- 
side the village of Toomegara and inclines to the west. 
After descending for a mile it rises again in leisurely 
fashion. Then at the crest, the sea surprises one, half 
a mile away, blue and rolling and wonderful altogether. 
Knockanare, then, is like a saucer, with Toomegara, small 
and indistinguished at one rim, turf fields running up and 
down all slopes, and the great, brooding sea at the other. 

It was eleven o'clock in the morning when Father John 
got off the train at Toomegara station and walked very 
leisurely down the silent street to Father Dan Dannaher's 
house. Father Dan was an elderly priest whom Father 
John had known years before when he answered Mass at 
St. Mary's, Limerick. Father Dan was only a young curate 
then; now he was a gray-haired, low-voiced parish priest 

105 



106 Memory Sketches 

rich In humility. When you were near him, you thought 
of an ancient tree motionless in the still air of a summer 
day; and when you entered his house there stole upon 
you the memory of a quiet harbor into which winds and 
rolling thunder never came. Father John loved the dear 
priest whose day was In the twilight and the dim, early 
stars; and may be that was an added reason why he went 
to Knockanare in showery April for his week's rest. 

Miss Kate Conway answered Father John's double 
knock on the black lion-headed knocker. Kate was called 
"Miss" for the reason that there Is no other title that may 
be prefixed to the name of an unmarried lady of fifty-six. 
*'WIsha, an' welcome to you. Father John!" 
''Thank you, Kate. How are you? How is Father 
Dan?' 

''Fine, fine, thank you, Father. He's expectin' you. 
Father Dan!" 

"Ay, ay. Come up, Father John," came a voice from 
above. The priest ascended the stairs. 

"Well, Father John, and here you are at long last! 
Man, I've been waiting for you these weeks back." 

"Father Dan, 'tis good to see you, to be near you, 
to hear your voice." He held the long, thin hand of the 
elderly priest between his own and looked affectionately 
at the dear old face. 

At the one o'clock dinner, which was set in the room 
adjoining the small parlor, Kate displayed her best ware 
and the nev/ silver set. 

"Will you have a glass of wine. Father John?" asked 
Kate. She always asked him whenever he came just to 
show how little she regarded his teetotalism. 

"No thank you," replied Father John with severity. 

" 'TIsn't good for the young," she said, placing a 



Knockanare by the Sea -107 

bottle of Inexpensive red wine on the table near Father 
Dan. 

"Nor for women," retorted Father John. 

''An' why, I'd like to know?" demanded Kate. 

"They have the gift of tongues without It." 

Kate had an answer ready, but she felt she had 
reached the boundary lines of discretion; so she disap- 
peared into the kitchen. 

"Tart, Father John!" ejaculated Father Dan as he 
sipped the wine. 

"Where do you buy your wine?" 

"I'm referring to your reply to the girl." 

"Well, she spoke — 'er — disparagingly of my teetotal- 
ism and naturally I had to seem acid." 

"Faith, there's enough of that in the world, and too 
little of what the essayist calls the sweetness and light." 

Father John made no reply; and, as so often happens 
when silence follows a mild rebuke. Father Dan felt 
regret for what he said. 

"Forgive me. Father John, I'm old and crotchety. 
You musn't mind me." 

"Father Dan" — and our dear priest took on the grand 
manner that always so became him — "you're right; you're 
altogether right. I was bitter when I should have been 
mellow; I was small and unworthy when I should have 
been large and forgiving." 

Then seeing that the troubled look continued on the 
face of the elderly priest, he added: 

"Never mind, never mind. 'Tis all over now and for- 
gotten." 

An hour after dinner Father John walked west on the 
road that fringed the bog fields toward the sea, while his 
host lingered In his little garden of lately-planted potatoes, 



108 Memory Sketches 

There was no glory of landscape on either side of the 
white road. Trenches out of which turf sods had been 
lately cut looked black and uninviting against the heather 
quickening to green; water, on the surface of which a 
green, slimy scum had gathered, lay still in every trench 
except for the little circles made by insects in the sparsely 
scattered clear spaces. Here and there men, women and 
children were at work cutting the dark, moist sods, and 
setting them out to dry. Cabins, in which lived the bog- 
men and their families, rose out of the barren land. 

Father John walked leisurely, looking to the left and 
to the right. Sometimes he stopped and kept his eyes 
for a long time on those who labored. Many of the 
women were barefoot. It was pathetic to see them bend- 
ing beneath the hampers of wet turf held in position on 
their backs by ropes of twine or hay. The little children, 
meek-faced and patient, whose world lay in the bog fields 
and malarial trenches, sent no ripple of laughter over the 
still air. And the men — their lot seemed as hopeless as 
if they were working out penal servitude in the bushes of 
Australia. 

^'Brilliant essayists and phrase-making orators call you 
the people of eternity," said Father John aloud as he 
looked across the field toward the lowly toilers. "God 
knows you deserve to be! You have very little of the 
things of time !" he added bitterly. 

A short distance on he met a little girl carrying a jug 
of water to some of those within the bog-fields. She was 
barefoot, but her hair was well combed and her face and 
hands clean. As she passed by she made a shy courtesy 
to the tall priest. The act touched him strangely. 

"How are you, my little one?" he said very graciously 
as he paused in his walk. 



Knockanare by the Sea 109 

"Well, thank you, Father." 

''Do you go to school?" 

''O, yes. Father, to Miss Murphy over at Toome- 
gara." 

''Miss Murphy? Who is she?" 

"O, she's the teacher that teaches us to sing in Irish 
an' reads for us the stories 'bout the Fenians an' 'bout 
Owen Roe!" 

"Ay," assented Father John, not wishing to interrupt 
this flow of information. 

"An', sure 'twas she," — the child continued, forgetting 
her timidity — "that gave me the story 'bout 'Rory of 
the Hill'." 

"I know that, child. Say it for me," urged the priest. 

And then in the soft language of the land, without 
the least overreaching of emphasis, the child delivered the 
stirring stanzas. There was enough of the fire of re- 
bellion in the piece to make it a favorite with dear Father 
John. 

" 'That rake up near the rafters" — the little girl 
pointed to an imaginary rake set under an imaginary 
roof — 

"Why leave it there so long? 
The handle of the best of ash 

Is smooth and straight and strong; 
And, mother, will you tell me, 

Why did my father frown 
When to make hay in summer time 

I climbed to take it down? 
She looked into her husband's eyes 

While her own with light did fill 
'You'll shortly know the reason, boy!' 

Said Rory of the Hill." 



no Memory Sketches 

You must imagine it all' the little girl with the 
soft, sweet brogue; the tall priest, half dreamer, half 
rebel, idealist and poet; the white road stretching across 
the dark peat fields to the horizon; the gray clouds sail- 
ing to eastward, and the faint rumble of the sea. It was 
like old wine to the heart of the priest, it stirred him 
so. And how his brain leaped when the little one cried 
out in childish treble ! 

She looked at him with woman's pride, 

With pride and woman's fears; 
She flew to him, she clung to him. 

And dried away her tears; 
He feels her pulse beat truly 

While her arms around him twine — 
*Now God be praised for your stout heart, 

Brave little wife of mine.' 
He swung his first-born in the air 

While with joy his heart did fill. 
'You'll be a freeman yet my boy,' 

Said Rory of the Hill." 

When she recited the final stanza Father John joined 
with her: 

"O Knowledge is a wondrous power, 

And stronger than the wind; 
And thrones shall fall and despots bow 

Before the might of mind," 

and so on, as of course you know, about the power of 
poet and orator and the vain hope that **Wolf Tone were 
here today." When it was all over Father John placed 



Knockanare by the Sea 111 

a piece of silver in the child's hand. She raised her black 
eyes to the great, good face and said ever so softly, 

*Tather, sure I spoke it for you." 

"I know, child, but you'll take it anyhow as a keep- 
sake." 

The next moment he was continuing his journey along 
the sloping road, stopping here and there to look back at 
the turf cutters. Then from the hill's crest, about a 
mile out, he beheld the sea. The breeze that came to him 
was fresh and cool and altogether different from the hot, 
heavy air of the bogs he had just left. 

There is that about the sea which awakens the wild 
longing in all of us. Amid the heat of a smoky city we 
dream of it; far inland, with flat plains all around us, we 
hope it will gladden our vision beyond the horizon. From 
whatever shore we come upon it, our hearts are lifted, 
as if we looked, after weary years of absence, at the 
blue smoke of the home chimney. 

Father John took off his hat like he would do going 
into the chapel. The sough of the surf came to him in 
deep, prolonged notes. He walked to the northwest, 
climbed a rush-covered knoll to get a better view. An 
old bogman, his eyes toward the sea, smoked leisurely in 
among the rushes. He put away his pipe and lifted his 
hat when the priest approached. 

*"Tis a calm sea today," observed Father John. 

"Ay, 'tis so. But she can be rough when the mood is 
on her." 

"I make no doubt. You have big storms I suppose." 
"We do. Father, we do indeed. There be times whin 
they make the strongest of us affeerd," answered the bog- 
man solemnly. 



112 Memory Sketches 

" 'Tis a lonesome stretch," observed the priest looking 
up and down the coast line. 

"Ay." 

Above the rushes rose a plain stone block that arrested 
the quick eye of the priest. 

'What Is this for?" he asked. 

''It marks a grave," answered the bogman. 

"A grave?" 

''Ay. Nora o' Nora's Cross." 

"Nora of Nora's Cross? Who Is she?" 

"Well," said the old bogman, " 'tis a bit of a story. 
Father, an'' If you have the time, an' care to walk a little 
bit, ril tell you ; for, your reverence, whin I sit awhile the 
rheumatism come back at me." The priest and the bog- 
man went leisurely to the northwest nearer the sea. 

"Well, Nora Downey lived at a cross In the road a 
half mile east o' Toomegara. For many years they called 
the place Nora's Cross,' " began the old bogman In a 
leisurely way. "Nora was a kind of a quare girl who 
never married an' never wint around to see the neigh- 
bors at all at all. Every day 'bout three o'clock she used 
to walk hether the road you came an' sit up on the hill 
we left, lookin' out at the say. An' this she did every 
day for many a long year. An' if you'd meet her and 
say to her, 'Yeh, Nora, what for do you stand out there 
long hours watchin' the say?' she'd answer, 

" 'To hear the voices.' 

"'What voices?' you'd ask. 

" 'The voices of all the min an' womin' of Ireland 
who lie under the say. The voices of all o' thim that left 
country an' kin an' never saw the land o' their draems. 
'Tis their voices I hear cryin' "Ochone, ochone" for the 
brown earth, an' the white daisies of Ireland.' 



Knockanare by the Sea 113 

*'ThIn one day a gale blew round the point from 
Kerry Head an' the say rushed up upon the land. 'They 
are callin' louder than ever for the brown earth an' the 
white daisies', Nora o' Nora's Cross cried whin the great 
waves came rollin' in. Thin all at once she left the hill 
back there an' ran down against the wind to the brink o' 
the say. She lifted her two hands up to heaven an' cried 
out louder than the wind, 'They're callin' for the white 
daisies and the brown earth! The brown earth and the 
white daisies!' Her long black hair flew back with the 
wind, her white hands were lifted to the sky. 'The brown 
earth,' she cried again, 'they're callin' for an' the white 
daisies! The white daisies, the brown earth — an' me!' 
Then a strange notion took her and she plunged into the 
say. She rose and fell with the waves for a while, all 
the time cryin' about the brown earth an' the white 
daisies, an' the lost ones below the wathers. Thin she 
wint under an' rose no more. 

"They found her three days after an' buried her over 
in Tur-na-Greega graveyard below an ould fir tree. But 
after she was buried the coffin was ruz above the ground 
next mornin'. They buried her the same day but again 
It ruz the mornin' after, an' so. on for seven days. Then 
Shemus Duggan says to thim all: ' 'Tis calling for the say 
she Is, an' she'll never rest till ye take her there.' Well, 
by gor, they were said by Shemus, an' took back the coffin 
In the early mornin' an' buried Nora up there on the hill 
by the say. An' she never ruz from that^day to this." 

"When did all this happen?" asked Father John. 

"Oh, years an' years ago, before your reverence, or 
me aether, was born." 

"But who saw this — this" — he v/as going to say "prod- 
igy', but he changed his mind and said — "wonder?" 



114 Memory Sketches 

"Yeh, everybody round about at the time." 

"And where are they all?" 

''Yeh, sure they're dead an' gone this long time." 

**Well, then, couldn't one dig up the bones an' be 
sure if one is really buried there. ?" 

"Yeh, no one would do that, your reverence, because 
'tis glad enough they were that Nora stayed down whin 
she did, let alone tryin' to make her rise again." 

The day had gone by when Father John walked back 
over the bog road to dear Father Dannaher's. The moon 
shone in the blue spaces between the motionless gray 
clouds; the stars were out and the time was very still. 
As he went. Father John mused: 

"A race that can fashion a story out of a block of 
stone standing yonder on the hill's crest will always have 
certain great names in the literature of the world. Their 
fancies will never starve for a theme. The black peat of 
the bog-field, the brown dust of the winding road will 
set them to seeing. This race has filled the treasure 
vaults of poetry with a million dreams." 

Dear Father John ! His rare mind would always 
seek the peaks where men see visions, but for all his 
heart stayed on the plains with the people. 



XV 
THE LEAGUE HOUSE 

THE road passing north of Progue's Point runs 
straight west until It climbs a hill and disappears. 
From Trout Stream below the Point, where It be- 
gins, until it vanishes beyond the rise of ground, the road 
does not swerve to left or to right by the fraction of a 
foot. Everybody around Creelabeg used to call this high- 
way the "Long Road" in those dear days. It was a sort 
of mystery road, due In part to the many tales people 
told about It; In part, too, to its reaching so far away to 
where it disappeared behind the hill. 

Many is the clear day the children coming back from 
school stood on the little bridge — Trout Bridge we called 
it — spanning Trout Stream, and looked over the straight 
road to the west. A donkey with his creel of turf, a few 
heifers driven to the fair by a farmer's lad, a side-car 
drawn by a white nag, a solitary peddler bent and travel- 
stained, a huxter woman, a country doctor sitting solitary 
and conscious of his importance in his black-painted gig — 
these and all manner of others went back and forth the 
Long Road from sun to dusk like birds of passage. 

How often, about ten o'clock in the morning, Father 
John walked across Progue's Point to the bridge for a 
long look to the west! You could see him there of warm 
July days leaning sideways on the little battlement gazing 
into the far-off vista. We never knew the dear man fully, 
he was so beyond us in his thought and feeling; yet some- 
how, it appeared to us he was lonesome, the way he waited 

115 



116 Memory Sketches 

and watched at the bridge. Maybe thought made him 
sad, thereby illustrating what Mr. Keats has sung, 

''When but to think is to be full of sorrow." 

Well, one mid-summer morning in late July or early 
August, Father John walked leisurely back the Long 
Road toward the rise of ground in the west. Jim Clancy, 
drivmg his gray mare harnessed to a car newly painted, 
overtook the priest about midway on the stretch of road. 
He put his timber pipe into his coat pocket just before 
he reached Father John. As he passed, the priest stopped 
him. 

''A warm day, Jim." 

''Ay, 'tis. Father John; ay, 'tis." 

"And good for the crops." 

"Ay, — 'specially the late hay. It needs the drouth 
now." 

"Your mare carries herself well, Jim. But I mustn't 
be keeping you. The market will be well on before you 
get to town." 

"Faix thin. Father,, an' 'tisn't to the market F'm goin' 
at all, but back to Glen." 

"To Glen? Why, Jim, that's a good twenty miles." 

" 'Tis. But thin I won't be back till tomorrow. To 
tell the truth, Father," said Jim confidentially, "I'm goin' 
to the big meetin' to help thim to bring the 'League 
House' to the McCabes o' Curragh." 

" 'The League House' to the McCabes of Curragh," 
repeated the mystified Father John. 

"Ah, thin, you haven't heard," said Jim comprehend- 
ingly. "You see. Father, the McCabes o' Curragh were 
put out o' their farm by Darcy, the landlord, two weeks 
ago ere yesterday. Well, they've been livin' about among 
the neighbors ever since." 



The League House 117 

"I have heard of the McCabes' eviction — they hve in 
Stonehall parish. But what has that to do with your 
going to Glen?" questioned the priest. 

''Well, you see, Father John, they have a timber house 
back there at Glen which the Land League put up for 
an evicted tinnent two years ago. A settlement was made 
last spring, the tinnent was put back on his farm, an' the 
League House they put up for him is idle. So 'tis back 
to Glen we're goin' for it, an' the McCabes o' Stonehall 
will have a home for thimselves." 

'1 see, I see. You'll return this road?" 

''Ay, Father John, in a procession an' with three 
bands." 

"Good day, Jim ; I'll watch for the return," said Father 
John abruptly. 

Jim lifted his hat and drove on. 

It was four o'clock the next afternoon when the pro- 
cession of sixty-five vehicles of all kinds came east over 
the Long Road bearing sections of the wooden building. 
The active bearers were eight in number: fifty-seven were 
honorary in character, lending their moral support, as 
it were, by adding to the length and importance of the 
procession. 

To tell the truth, the different sections of the much- 
mentioned League House which were borne on the horse 
carts would not quicken you to admiration. They were 
unpainted, and therefore spoiled by sun and rain. Here 
and there a joist was broken, an upright split, a board 
missing; rusty nails stuck out loose, like teeth in the 
mouth of a skeleton. 

Father John, with Mike Sheahen, Tim Condon and a 
few more young men of the parish went down to Trout 
Bridge to watch the passing of the long procession. Ardee 



118 Memory Sketches 

brass band played a few bars of "Wearln' o' the Green" 
from a position of honor in Normoyle's *4ong car" that 
was hired especially for the great day by the Ardee 
branch of the Land League. There was a brief halt, out 
of consideration for Father John probably, during which 
the priest ran his eyes along the eight cars which were 
honored with sections of the building. Presently the pro- 
cession moved leisurely like a deep river going out to 
sea. Father John stopped Tim Donovan of Kilmeedy, 
the driver of the last car, which was occupied by four 
other men. Kilmeedy was somewhat remote from Creei- 
abeg, so Tim was not included in Father John's circle of 
acquaintances. 

" 'Tis a big affair this," said the priest. 

'' 'Tis, thin, your reverence. The min o' the country 
turned out well," assured the Kilmeedy man. 

**You have enough horses and cars and men to carry 
the temple of Solomon." 

Tim did not penetrate the Biblical reference, so his 
answer was non-committal. 

"Faith, I'll engage the same is true for your rev- 
erence." 

"But I notice you have only eight horses bearing the 
burden." 

*'Well, your reverence, we wanted to have it like a 
grand dinner intirely — with lots o' laevin's." 

"Yes," answered Father John, in that quiet way we 
all so enjoyed, "but the laevins' are larger than the 
dinner." 

"That's our way o' bein' big in this country, your 
reverence. Plenty for all.'* 

"Quite so. A multiplication of the loaves, as it were." 



The League House 119 

"Ay; or puttin' butter on two sides o' the bread an' 
sugar on one," grinned Jim. 

Father John dropped figure and took up fact. 

''Don't you think, my dear man, 'tis a great waste 
bringing this wreckage of lumber all the way from the 
west: a waste of time, a waste of money, and a waste 
of labor? Here you have spent two days, more or less, 
on this fantastic trip; you have been away from your 
fields and your gardens; your horses are tired and your- 
selves are tired too. And all — for what? To bring 
back with you a few odd dozen pieces of lumber and 
scantling that never can be reconstructed into a house 
fit for man or beast. Didn't the thought come to any 
one that all of you, by getting together and giving as 
much, as you honestly were able, could have built a 
little house that would cost a bit more in money, per- 
haps, but would be worth the giving when you were 
done with it?" 

**Wisha no, thin, your reverence, the same thing 
was never mintioned among us. You see most o' the 
min thought 'twould be a grand thing to have a long 
drive across the country with great cheerin' an' a 
couple o' bands playin'." 

"Yes, but that poor family down at Stonehall," in- 
sisted the priest, "would have a house to live in if you 
went about the thing with some sort of plan." 

"O, but your reverence, they'd be no bands thin 
an' no cheerin' an' no glory." 

"Perhaps not. But a brass band and shouting do 
not keep out the autumn rains and the frosts of winter." 

"That's all true, your reverence. But 'tis a pow- 
erful good thing to let the inemies o' the counthry 
know we're alive." 



120 Memory Sketches 

''Quite so, even If your friends in Stonehall die from 
cold." Dear Father John, he could send home a hard 
truth sometimes ! He looked at the driver for a 
moment In silence, then said without a trace of bitter- 
ness: 

''Good day, my man. You had best catch up with 
the procession. You have brave hearts, anyhow." Then 
he walked across the large field through which Trout 
Stream ran till he reached Progue's Point. "Brave 
hearts, indeed," he mused, as if completing his thought. 
"Would to God there was one wise head to direct 
them." 

Seven months later Father John was driving through 
the district of Stonehall on his way home from Limerick. 
It was In the afternoon and the sky was grey. On the 
right side of the road stood two circular stone piers 
from each of which swung an iron gate. Intermittent 
gusts of wind shook the ivy that was knotted close 
around the piers. On the left side a large field of furz 
stretched north to the horizon. In a cleared space in 
the middle of this field a roofless wooden house stood 
out forlorn against a sombre horizon. The furz bushes 
rose and fell in little, irregular waves like a choppy sea. 
Three workmen were scraping the soft white upper sur- 
face of the road to one of the grassy sides. Father John 
told his hired jarvey driver to stop when they reached 
the nearest of the workmen. 

"That house in the middle of the field, what is it?" 
asked Father John, without any introduction. 

"Yeh, that's the League House, your reverence." 

"Is that the house they brought from Glen some 
months ago?" 

" 'TIs, your reverence; O faix 'tis." 



The League House 121 

*'For an evicted family?" 

"Ay, your reverence, the McCabes o' Curragh." 

''And do they live in it?" 

'*Wisha no thin, they don't. Whin 'twas brought 
hether from the west they built it up like, an' that same 
night a big wind came by way of Tarbert an' tumbled 
the roof off it entirely. Then it rained two days runnin' 
an' when it stopped rainin' the carpenthers had a deal o' 
work to do, an' four weeks wint by an' not a hap'orth 
was done to the house. Thin two daughters o' the 
McCabes who were out in America sint passage money 
to the whole family an' before the carpenthers made up 
their mind to put the roof on again, the McCabes were 
all in America, and so they didn't make up their minds 
at all." 

"And no doubt they won't in the future?" Father 
smiled ever so quietly. 

"Hardly, your reverence," answered the road-man 
confidentially. "You see some other poor evicted tin- 
nint may need it elsewhere, an' by the time the roof 
would be on they'd have to be takin' it off again, maybe." 

'Tm afraid the house won't stand many more 
journeys of triumph. It looks as if the day of disso- 
lution were near," ventured Father John with concealed 
irony. 

" 'Tis the truth, your reverence. But an' all the 
same if it don't fall to pieces intirely we'll give it a 
couple o' more rides." 

"What is the use? No one can live in it with human 
comfort." 

"They'll be marchin' an' glory anyhoy^, so 'tis aequal," 
answered the roadman with as much finality as if he 
were answerin' a question in the catechism. 



122 Memory Sketches 

"Good day, my man," said the priest after bidding 
the jarvey driver to move on. 

'' We are a strange race," he mused as he was 
driven over the wet country road. "We build railroads 
and direct the maneuvring of fleets; we thrill Parlia- 
ments and watch the corn-exchange. We are orators, 
politicians, men of enterprise and affairs. And for all 
that we are as supremely foolish and impractical as any 
race in the history of the world. We have helped to 
build and to rule cities, and still we can descend to the 
quixotism of carting a collection of rotten boards from 
one end of the country to the other. We would be 
hopeless, only I think those rascals see the humor of it. 
Yes, the rogues like change and travel and excitement. 
That show house gives them an excuse for a free day — 
far from the sweat and dust of garden and hay-field. 
Our sense of drollery saves us." 



XVI 

THE BRAVE DESERVES THE FAIR. 

MIKE CONDON came down from Cork to superin- 
tend the frieze-workers in the Newbridge Wool- 
en Mills. If you went straight west from Creel- 
abeg over Grageen road, not turning north toward Athery 
nor south toward Ardee at Grageen cross, you would 
meet, some distance on, a bridge that crosses the Deel in 
four spans. Beyond the bridge the mill buildings stand 
in from the road. We used to think it a great thing in 
those days to go to Newbridge with our parents when they 
carried back so many pounds of wool and received so 
many yards of tweed or frieze in return. How those 
buildings, four stories high, towered above us ! And how 
we wondered what would happen to the world if they 
ever fell ! How from afar, with wide eyes and throbbing 
hearts we watched the great, primitive mill-wheel going 
round and round in lazy revolutions! How sinister it 
looked as it churned the waters into foam that lingered 
upon the blue surface, like a passion still unspent, far 
down the river! Then, too, the solemn booming of 
wheels and cylinders and the swift, mysterious movements 
of carding and weaving machines wrought up our imag- 
inations to wonderment. 

Well, Mike Condon was an expert in the art of 
making frieze ; and that is why he came all the way from 
Cork to oversee the frieze workers at a salary of three 
pounds a week. There was a school-house about five 
lengths of a telegraph pole west of Gragreen cross, and 
half-way between that and Newbridge a police-barracks 

123 



124 Memory Sketches 

at a place called ''Hill Corner." It was so named be- 
cause there was no hill there, and no corner either. 

Kate Collins came over from Newbridge to teach 
school at Gragreen and, after the children were gone, 
went back home in the evening. She was a grand girl, 
twenty-one, with eyes the color of the river Deel just 
below Athery where it joins the Shannon. She had a 
good schooling, was gentle-mannered and carried her 
fortune in her smile. I must not praise her too much, 
however, lest I seem partial to one from my side of the 
county. And yet, if you met her as she went along 
nodding to some old woman rinsing the milk pans, you 
would surely stop and look at her again. 

Well, there was a policeman back at ''Hill Corner" 
who had taken a fancy to the girl, and in the course of 
time they became "great" with each other, as we say 
at home. He was a smooth, finished man, this Mr. 
James Roe of her Majesty's police, who could smile 
graciously. Often as he walked over the Gragreen road 
he met Miss Kate, and begged permission to go a piece 
of the way with her in order to carry her class books. 
Sometimes he sent her a little basket of choice fruits 
by one of the children, or maybe he bought her a 
present for Christmas that was a wonder for all eyes. 

"Wisha, 'tis a pity that Kate Collins thinks about 
the peeler whin there are so many others," Mrs. Don- 
nelly made observation while on her way to the market. 

" 'Tis," agreed Mrs. Hartigan; "an' if she'd only 
turn her head aside a little, she'd find lots of others a 
great dael better." 

"Daecenter at any rate," said Mrs. Hartigan some- 
what bitterly. 



The Brave Deserves the Fair 125 

So the talk went around among the neighbors about 
the great pity it was that Kate Collins, the grandest 
girl from Adare to Shanagolden, should care a ha'pworth 
about a man in the government's service. As for Kate 
herself, she did not seem to mind at all one way or 
another. Sometimes you would think she had all but 
given her promise to marry him, the way people talked; 
but, as so often happens, it proved to be the mere chaff 
of rumor. 

As everybody knew. Father John was an out-and-out 
Nationalist. He was as polite as a gentleman should 
be with the hired servants of a foreign government, 
but he never mingled with them socially. Now when our 
dear priest saw from the straw of friendship how the 
wind was blowing his heart was heavy. Yet what could 
he do? He could not very well say, ''Now, Miss Kate, 
you must give up Mr. James Roe," because there was 
nothing in the catechism against a girl marrying a 
policeman. It was purely a question of racial tradition, 
and one could not be insistent on that. 

One afternoon late in January, Father John met Miss 
Kate beyond Gragreen on her way home from school. 
It was a typical mid-winter day in West Limerick. The 
Banshee wailed among the naked tree limbs and dark 
clouds raced across the sky. 

'' 'Tis a moody day, Kate," said Father John, his 
great coat buttoned to the collar. 

"Yes, indeed, Father. But 'tisi pleasanter than 
snow or rain." 

"Ay, so it is." As a matter of fact. Father John was 
not interested at all in the weather. 

"Kate," he said, "there is a little matter I want to 
talk about, so I'll go back a bit toward Newbridge with 



126 Memory Sketches 

you." They ^went for some moments in silence, and 
Father John resumed: 

"Now, Kate, this is what I want you to do for me. 
A number of our women formed a club two weeks ago 
for the purpose of making clothes for the poor of the 
district. Just now they are scurrying around for help 
wherever they can find it — Catholic or Protestant, 
Pagan or Jew. I myself am looking for the brightest 
and handsomest girls to lend a hand in the good work." 

"Yes, but Father," said Kate without the sign of a 
smile, ("you preached from the altar two weeks ago 
Sunday that flattery is as treacherous for Christians as 
bait is for the fish." 

"Quite so, but I never thought about the needs of 
the Woman's Club when I said that," answered Father 
John equally solemn. 

"So, I suppose by flattering my vanity you hope to 
win me." 

"Ay." 

"Then you flatter me and tell me you flatter me, 
which is no flattery at all." 

"The very thing," answered Father John, mildly 
triumphant. "What I said in the sermon was all 
right, and what I say to you is all right. So, of course, 
you'll do what I ask like always." 

"Indeed I will. Father John, flattery or no flattery. 
Especially since 'tis for the poor." 

"Now I want you to call at Newbridge on your way 
home and ask the superintendent for a donation of 
tweed for the women. Smile your best when you see 
him, so he'll give generously. I know you will. Thank 
you. God bless you!" 

On Saturday morning Kate went to the mill. The 



The Brave Deserves the Fair 127 

day of ''moods" which Father John referred to earlier 
in the week was transformed into a day of crisp frost 
and faraway blue skies. She entered the mill office and 
sat in the chair to which one of the clerks motioned her. 
Another clerk disappeared through one of the side doors 
in search of the superintendent. After a wait of some 
minutes a tall man entered the office and stood before 
the school-teacher. Kate rose. 

"You wish to see me?" he asked. The girl noticed 
from her one swift glance that the man who stood 
before her was tall and dark-haired, with a face eager 
and intelligent. 

"Yes, I — I want to see the superintendent." 

"I'm the superintendent." 

"I am Miss Collins and am come to you on an er- 
rand. You see, Mr. " 

"Condon," Mike informed her. 

"You see, Mr. Condon, Father John has organized 
the women of the parish into a society for helping the 
poor with food and clothing. Of course a work of this 
kind needs sympathy and help on all sides, if it is to 
do half what's expected of it. Certain parts of the 
district have been assigned to different persons to solicit 
money, clothing or whatever they can get from the 
well-disposed. I have been appointed to Newbridge, 
and so I am here this morning in the hope that you may 
be able to do something for me." 

"You put it all very nicely. Miss Condon; but I'd like 
to know just what you expect from us — money or 
clothes?" 

"We take whatever we get, Mr. Condon. But 
since you're good enough to allow me to choose, I sug- 
gest the company donate some tweed." 



128 Memory Sketches 

"Very good, Miss Collins. I'm sure the manager 
will be delighted. Just a moment." Mike was gone 
one minute and back the next. 

''Come this way and make your selection." 

In the stock room Mike tried his best to please. 

''Now this is a piece of goods which you will find 
wears very well." 

"Yes, and the color seems so suitable, too," com- 
mented Kate, eyeing the sample critically. "Yes, I 
think 'tis just what we want." 

Forthwith, Mike measured off a generous portion, 
had one of his aids fold and wrap it, and now it was 
all ready for the critical Miss Kate. The bundle was 
very large for a lone girl to carry, so Mike took it 
for her. On the way to Kate's home, they talked . 
about trivial things — ^teaching, how Mike liked New- 
bridge, the cold which Kate's mother contracted two 
weeks before and what trouble she had getting rid of 
it. It was all about so little, yet it all meant so much. 
The girl was happy when she said "Good-morning" at 
the threshold of her own home. 

"Won't you come in for a moment?" 

"I'd better not this morning, Miss Collins. You see 
I've just escaped for a few minutes." 

"Well, some other time; then. I'll ilet you know 
what Father John thinks of your tweed." 

"Indeed, I'll be glad. Miss Collins, and thank you." 
Mike went away with a heart uplifted. 

It's a long way to follow the course of true love, 
so winding and so strange a path it goes. Mike Condon 
visited Miss Kate the next Sunday, advised her mother 
about the best kind of a shawl to wear as a protection 
against the winter cold. He took her to the Tralee 



The Brave Deserves the Fair 129 

races, to the hurling matches at Newcastle, to the re- 
gatta at Foynes, to Limerick for the Autumn Feis. 

"By gor, the peeler is out in the yard intirely!" ob- 
served Johnny Mangan when a few of the boys were 
fishing back at the Deel one Sunday afternoon. 

''Divil skhurt to him!" answered Dick Fitz as he 
smoked quietly. 

*' 'Twill be a match, man!" Johnny added after he 
had secured a light from Dick. There was a silence of 
some minutes and then Tom Sheahan made observation: 

''Ay, you can't tell, Johnny; you can't tell. Sometimes 
they go together awhile an' then they laeve off; an' thin, 
again, sometimes, they don't." 

"Yeh, Miss Kate, have you given up the peeler?" 
asked Mike's Mikeen as he m.et the school teacher near 
the chapel gate. Kate tilted her head grandly and flung 
back, 

"How dare you!" 

"Yerra, you needn't get mad, morrayha ! Sure we all 
know 'tis dyin' about you he is." 

" 'Tis over in the priest's garden you ought to be 
hoeing the carrots," admonished Kate. 

"Wisha, Kate, I'll have carrots enough to hoe whin 
I raech the garden o' Paradise, please God!" 

"Faith, at the rate you're going, Mikeen, you'll never 
get there. 'Tis working for Father John you should 
be, and not gadding round here." 

"Yeh, sure Father John knows I'm inclined to over- 
work myself by nature, an' so he don't mind at all if 

I rest a dhras." 

* * * * 

Dear Father John! He hoped against every odd 
that Mike would be successful in winning the hand and 



130 Memory Sketches 

heart of Miss Kate. One day he met the superintendent 
and said to him: 

"1 suppose you and a certain young lady will come 
in to see me soon." 

"I don't know, Father/' laughed Mike. "You see 
it takes courage to ask when you expect 'no' for an 
answer." 

" 'Only the brave deserve the fair,' " quoted the 
priest. 

"Faith, I'll be brave if 'tis any use," answered Mike. 

When the priest met Kate six weeks later, he said: 

"Miss Kate, that Mike Condon is a grand young 
man. I hope he wins the girl that's worthy of him." 

" 'Tis so grand he is," said Kate, "I'm afraid there'll 
be none at all worthy of him!" Her palaver did not 
escape Father John. 

"I don't mean he is a demi-god, of course; but I 
think he's a man any girl should be proud of. Besides, 
he is one of our own, out-and-out of the people." 

"O he's all that you say, I'm sure. Father." 

"Then what's the matter with you? Why don't you 
encourage the young man?" 

"Does he need encouragement? Is that why you 
told him that 'Only the brave deserve the fair'?" 

"Did he tell you that?" 

Kate laughed quietly. 

One Wednesday in mid-March, Mr. James Roe of 
her Majesty's police received word of his transfer from 
Hill Corner to Banagar. He was to leave the follow- 
ing Saturday. 

"I'll engage he'll ask her before he goes," com- 
mented Johnny Mangan. 



The Brave Deserves the Fair f 131 

''You're maenin' the peeler will ask Miss Kate?" 
Mike Sheahan asked. 

"Ay." 

Johnny was right; Mr. James Roe proposed. 

Kate listened to Roe's little address and then an- 
swered with the sweetest smile: 

"I cannot consider your proposal at all, Mr. Roe. 
You will understand why when I tell you I'm already 
engaged." 

When Mr. James Roe left Saturday, Father John was 
delighted. 

''So you didn't go with Mr. Roe, the policeman, 
after all," he observed to her a few days afterwards. 

"How could I," laughed Kate, "and I already en- 
gaged." 

"Indeed! To Mike Condon?" 

*'Yes, the 'Brave deserve the fair,' man." 

"Deo Gratias," answered Father John, like the clerk 
when answering Mass. 



XVII 
THE CONCERT. 

I MUST tell you about the concert Father John ar- 
ranged for all the people of the parish shortly after 
Christmas. First of all, of course, there were those 
preliminary murmurings of dissent, those little quiet 
ironies that are the peculiar weapons of the Irish. 

"Wisha, faith, 'tis little good concerts will do the 
likes of us." 

" 'Deed thin, 'tis better off we'd be at home in our 
beds, not listenin' to their singin' all night." 

"By gor, 'tis goin' to Dublin we'll be by an' by to 
hear the singers from foreign parts." 

All the same, preparations and rehearsals went on 
with enthusiasm. Jim Condon, the carpenter, enlarged 
the stage of the school hall and fixed the floor in a few 
places; Mrs. Sullivan washed the windows, and a number 
of the girls of the parish evolved and executed a scheme 
of decoration. 

The rehearsals were carried on in gloomy secrecy. 
You heard plaintive notes of a violin or bird-like 
rhapsodies of a piccolo through the locked doors and 
windows of a large room over Keegans' drapery. 
Children went in noiselessly during the early evening and 
returned an hour later. If you were of a curious turn 
and stopped to inquire of them what were the ''doings" 
they would smile sweetly and pass on. 

''What are you goin' to have for the concert?" Jack 
Walsh inquired of Jim Donnelly back at the forge. 
Jim had a part in the program. 

132 



The Concert 133 

"There's no knowin' at all, man!" 

"Yerra you needn't be so sacret about it!" said Jack 
sarcastically. 

"Yeh, but sure if 'twasn't a sacret 'twould be no good 
at all." 

'*An' why wouldn't it, I'd like to know?" 

''Because you want to be surprised, man; just like 
whin you get maet for your dinner and don't expect it." 

On the night of the concert the wind came cold from 
the mouth of the Shannon to the northwest. The clouds 
fled over the face of the sky and the moon shone fitfully. 
The school hall was brim full of people when the time 
came for the opening of the program. After the cur- 
tain went up, thirty little girls shone white from the 
stage on the darkened hall. 

''By gor, who are they?" asked Dick Fitz of Johnny 
Mangan in a whisper. 

"Childer," Johnny answered without turning his head. 

"Yeh, sure I know that, but arn't they strangers?" 

" 'Deed thin they aren't. There's Maggie Stokes, 
an' Kittie Kelly, an' Nora Cronin in the first row there 
in front o' you." 

"You don't say! By gor, I v/ould never know thim." 

A fifteen year old miss at the piano runs her fingers 
along the keys with the abandon of one of the Renowned, 
bounds back to earth and signals the chorus to begin. 
The young voices send this invitation to the Creelabeg 
listeners : 

"Come away into the night 
The stars are shining! 
See, the moon in her far height 

Is gracefully reclining! 
Come away! Come away! 



134 Memory Sketches 

The stars are shining, 
The white moon reclining. 
Come! Come! O come away! 
O come away! 
O come away!" 

It was a sweet, airy piece that ran to the extent of 
three stanzas and then died away with a much drawn- 
out note of farewell. The people applauded heartily 
for the children looked ever so pretty in their white 
dresses, every head crowned with a rose. 

Jim Donnelly came later on to offer his flute solo. 

*'Wisha, look at the bow he makes to us!" Mary 
McCabe whispered to her friend Kittie Hannon. 

Jim was not supreme in the art of his instrument. He 
had not the manner of the master, the poise that is half 
in-born, half learned, and he had a ludicrous way of 
closing his eyes, swinging his body from side to side and 
keeping time with his foot. In addition his breathing 
was noticeably loud. 

*'B' dad he's like a broken-winded horse," Ned 
Donovan made observation while Jim perspired over 
his rendition of the ''Blackbird." 

''Yeh, don't mind him, man; he's doin' the best he 
can," answered Jack Madigan. 

"He is, he is indeed; but his best is bad, by gor. 
He's getting so red he'll kill himself." 

'Teh, that'll do now. D'ye lave him alone," cau- 
tioned Jack. 

Mary Clancy came out with her violin. She received 
an ovation that continued while she tuned her instru- 
ment I must tell you about Mary and why she was 
the best-liked girl in all Creelabeg. 



The Concert 135 

After finishing her schooling, Mary took up dress- 
making at Liskara — a small town five miles east of 
Limerick. She was there about two years when she met 
a young man named John Lynch who drove the mail- 
car from Limerick City on east through Liskara. Mary 
was an attractive girl, and by and by the two fell in 
love. The young man proposed. Mary wrote home 
to ask her mother's advice. Mrs. Clancy wrote back 
and advised Mary to have the young man come out and 
visit with the family some Sunday. Well, John Lynch 
went out and pleased everybody beyond the telling. So 
it was arranged that they be married by Father John 
the last Tuesday but one before Lent at the eight 
o'clock Mass. Those preparations of millinery and 
dressmaking were hurried along for the event as If the 
gates of heaven might close before they were finished. 
Margaret Crimmins was to act as bridesmaid and a 
strange man from County Meath — Lynch was a Meath 
man — was to stand beside the groom. Then came the 
news that Lynch was the son of an emergency man who 
did every kind of henchman service for a bad landlord 
in County Meath. The information was searched into 
and found to be true. Lynch had concealed his father's 
ugly calling and the unforgettable taint upon himself. 

" 'Twill be hard on Mary," Mrs. Hayes observed 
to Mrs. Sheahan when the news seeped through. 

'Twill, poor girl! An' I'm wonderin' If she'll give 

him up." 

"An' I'm wonderin' too. Like as not she won't." 
''An' he the son of a 'mergency man! An' she the 

child o' dacent people!" Mrs. Sheahan was horrified. 
Mary Clancy herself said never a word to anybody, 

until two days before the wedding. Then she called at 



136 Memory Sketches 

the parish house to see Father John. The priest met 
her in the parlor. It was dark in the room for the sky 
was overcast and sullen. Father John looked kindly 
at the girl and waited. He was a great priest always, 
but never so great as when he dealt with the heart- 
broken. 

''Father," said Mary ever so softly, ''I came to 
speak to you about it." 

''I understand," he answered and so spared her the 
pain of recital. 

''And now, Father, I'm come to you for advice. Am 
I to break the engagement?" 

"That's for you to say, child." 

"I love him, Father, and I've promised him, and 'tis 
hard now to turn back." 

"Ay." 

"And he has always been honorable and kind." 

"True, very true, indeed," answered Father John, 
who, however he felt, did not wish to oppose the girl 
then. He added: "From the point of view of religion 
there's no serious objection." 

"Of course he's the son of an emergency man. 
Father, and I wonder if in honor I can marry him?" 

"Do you wish my answer?" asked Father John. 

" 'Tis for th?t I came, Father. I want to know if I 
can honorably, as an Irish girl, marry John Lynch?" 

"I fear not," answered Father John, as if he were 
pronouncing a doom. 

"Thank you, Father. Then I'll break off the engage- 
ment." 

So John Lynch and Mary Clancy were not married 
on the last Tuesday but one before Lent, nor ever after. 
Because of Mary's great loyalty in sacrificing love to 



The Concert " 137 

the traditions of her race, she became the most admired 
girl in all the town. 

And that is why Mary received such rare greeting 
the night of Father John's concert. You should have 
heard her play! She awoke all the dreamy melodies 
of Ireland, those great things that contain the sighs and 
the tears and the laughter of our race from the begin- 
ning until now. 

''WIsha God bless her!" prayed Mrs. Donovan in 
approval as Mary's bow glided back and forth over the 
strings with a velvet touch. 

Next, Jim Hayes danced a reel with such dash that 
there were cries of ''Bravo!" "Great!" 'Treble it man!" 
Nora Cotter sang "She Is Far from the Land" without 
distinction of any kind and Dr. Moylan recited the 
"Hussars," a selection which few understood owing to 
the sprinkling of strange words. 

At the close of the program, before the people had 
time to leave. Father John stood on the floor below the 
stage. We all knew he had something to say and 
waited. 

"The program Is finished and, all said, It satisfies me. 
It will satisfy you, too, if you understand its purpose. 
As a race we have the greatest heritage of song that 
has ever come out of the ages, but we do very little to 
preserve that heritage. You sing — not knowing, per- 
haps, but still you sing — the absurdities of London 
playhouses (and leave unrecorded the lovely melodies 
of our nation. We borrow baubles from the pawn- 
shops of strangers while our own chests are bursting 
with gold." "We sing" — and here Father John lifted his 
right hand as he always did when the feeling caught 
him — "We sing to the piping of a tin whistle, while the 



138 Memory Sketches 

harp and the zither are in the dust at our feet. We come 
of bards, but we have lost the glories of bardic tradi- 
tion. Our fathers have sung to the ages and our ton- 
gues are as voiceless as clay." 

And so he went on and on kindling with the fire of 
his own soul the souls of his people till they too were 
ablaze. When we left the hall that night there was not 
one who would not profess himself ready to sell half 
his holding for the glory of Irish music. 

On the way home Dick Fitz said to the boys: **By 
gor, I'm going to get the ould flute out o' the loft an' 
try a few bars." 

**Yeh, but sure you must get some one to taech you," 
suggested Johnny Mangan. 

"I believe I'll learn 'Garryown' on the harp," in- 
terrupted Jack Hogan. 

*'ril jine the choir," said Mick Sheahan. 

"Well, I'll get a melodyean, at laest," was Tom 
Ahern's comment. 

"Ye can all say what ye like an' play what ye like," 
concluded Mike's Mikeen, "but Fm thinkin' I'll never be 
happy now till I get a zither. You understand me — a 
zither." 



: r XVIII 

THE BARD OF ARDAGH. 

ARDAGH was eight Irish miles from our town and 
boasted of a bard. Otherwise Creelabeg was sup- 
erior In every corner of competition. Jim Ahern 
was Ardagh's bard and sang of Ardagh's glories. The 
glories were not crowded as thick as stars of a July night, 
to be sure. But a poet must sing. So when uneventful 
months went their leisurely way Jim Ahern created glories 
and clothed them In rimes and meters. 

Father Moylan was the curate of Ardagh: land lea- 
guer, orator, and people's man. Father John was a 
classmate of his in college days and they had read the- 
ology together In Maynooth. Although many of their 
young visions had gone out of the sky, although their 
sunsf had paled a thousand times under the clouds of the 
later day they had not forgotten all the fresh-blown 
splendors of the morning. 

In late July Father John was spending a day with his 
friend Father Moylan. It was a pleasant visit among 
old books, old pictures, and dear memories now passing 
out into the twilight. In the mid-afternoon our priest 
took a leisurely walk over a quiet road beside which hay 
fields stretched to a blue horizon. He met Jim Ahern, 
the bard of Ardagh, fixing a gap in the ditch through 
which the hay had been carted some weeks before. For 
you must keep in mind, though Jim cavorted above the 
clouds, vaulting over comets in his far flights, he made 
his living among the fields where the odor of saved hay 
comes laden with dreams the summer long. 

139 



140 Memory Sketches 

''How runs the muse these days?" asks the priest. 
Jim has not made a course in mythology. 

''O faith, well enough, Father John, considerin' 
everythin'." 

" 'Tis fortunate you are, Jim, to be able to mount 
your Pegasus, and gallop off leaving trouble and care 
behind you." 

''Wisha, thin, in a way 'tis true, though at times I 
do be thinkin' different." 

''How can you feel otherwise than happy, living on 
your Parnasus with the select great forever?" 

"By gor. Father John, I'll agree with you. An' 'tisn't 
lor me to contradict the priest whatever my own idaes 
may be." Then Jim left an unfamiliar earth for an earth 
he knew. 

"May be, Father John, you'd like to hear the ballet 
I lately composed about Father Moylan?" 

"Pll be glad to hear anything that glorifies my friend," 
the priest answered with more enthusiasm than the pro- 
posal seemed to call for. 

Jim took from the inside pocket of his waist-coat a 
manuscript that might have come from the time of the 
Tuatha De Dananns. There were seventeen (stanzas 
to the piece, which Jim, after a preliminary clearing of 
his throat, began to read. He ended every line with 
a rising inflection, and paused at the conclusion of every 
stanza as if it were a new triumph. 

" 'Twas a cold December morning 

In the year of eighty-eight. 
When the peelers from Knockderrig 

Marched to Thomas Nolan's gate. 
They marched with guns and bayonets 

Altogether four by four 



The Bard of Ardagh 141 

Led by a villain sergeant 

To Thomas Nolan's door. 
''They came to Thomas Nolan 
A man both poor and old. 
He could not pay the rent that year 

For Thomas had no gold. 
His wife, she was distracted, 

Her heart, it was full sore 
When the peelers marched upon her 
To Thomas Nolan's door. 
"Said the sergeant to the bailiff, 
'Now step up to the wall; 
And the bailiff he obeyed him 

And to Nolan he did call, 
'Now go from out these premises 

And come back here no more, 
By the law you are evicted 

From Thomas Nolan's door.' 
"Then up stepped Father Moylan, 

A priest both brave and true" — 
"And, Jim, I hope you'll tell me 
What did this good priest do?" 

— came Father John's riming interruption. 

"I'm comin' to it, I'm comin' to it immediately," 
Jim assured. 

Then he resumed — 

"And spoke unto the sergeant 

In words both strong and few, 
'O shame that you should do this deed. 
It makes my heart right sore. 
To see you send this family 

From Thomas Nolan's door.' " 



142 Memory Sketches 

Father John Interrupted In /plain prose this time. 
''Never mind the rest, Jim. Tell me briefly what hap- 
pened." 

''So you won't hear any more of my ballet?'' asked 
Jim, his feehngs unmistakably hurt. 

"No," Insisted the priest. "The substance, the 
raiiltum in parvOy will do." 

"Maenin' by that, a-long-story-short?" asked Jim. 

"Ay." 

"Well," — and Jim was sorely disappointed, — "Father 
Moylan talked with thim an' by the power of his elo- 
quence Induced sergeant an' peelers to go back to their 
barracks an' laeve the Nolans where they were." 

"When did all this happen?" 

"O 'twas In the days whin great laeders stood up 
for the people," answered Jim vaguely. 

"Well, did Nolan retain his house and land?" 

" 'Deed he did. Sure the peelers never came back, 
they were that afeered o' Father Moylan." 

"But I never read of this in the papers." 

"Father John," answered Jim, "there be many things 
happens that don't be In the papers." 

"Yes, and there be many things in the papers that 
don't happen," rejoined Father John sententlously. 

"Ay, an' that's the truth, your Reverence. An' now 
If you'll listen again, you can hear all about it in my 
ballet/' 

"Not now, — not today," said the priest emphatically. 

"Well, thin. Father John, you're missin' the best of 
it. The part near the Ind Is the best." 

"It will keep — all good things keep, Jim. And 
wasn't Father Moylan arrested?" 



The Bard of Ardagh 143 

''Arrested! They couldn't do it. The people 
would rise, sure my ballet says that — 

''The peelers would arrest him, 

That man both good and true, 
But the people stood around him 

And kept him from their view." 
"The people—" 
*'Don't read any more, Jim," broke in Father John. 
*'Were there many people present when this hap- 
pened?" 

"Thousands." 

"Indeed!" 

"Sure it says so — 

'The people stood by thousands 
Around the holy man.' " 
"I'll take your word for it, Jim. 'Tis coming 
toward noon and I must be getting on." 

"Ah, I see your reverence is in a hurry an' won't 
stay to hear all the ballet/' 
"Not today." 

In the afternoon, shortly before he left for his 
train. Father John said: 

"Moylan, you've become a very considerable figure 
in this section. Jim has made you immortal in his 
latest uprising." 

"Has he? Poor Jim!" Father Moylan answered 
sympathetically. 

"This affair of the eviction has made you a sort of 
hero. How did you manage it?" 
"Manage what?" 

"O you know well enough; rebuking the sheriff and 
holding the police at bay." 

"Sheriff? Police? Man, what wild talk is this?" 



144 Memory Sketches 

"No wild talk at all. Your Jim, the bard, sang all 
about it — the eviction and your great defy that kept the 
peelers from Thomas Nolan's door." 

'When did you hear all this?" 

''This morning under the sun while Jim fixed a gap 
in the road ditch." 

"Well! well! well!" There was a long pause, then 
Father Moylan said: 

"There never was such a thing. There hasn't been 
an eviction in this locality since I came here. And you 
may be sure I've never had the distinction of having an 
encounter with the police." 

"Jim's imagination?" 

"Jim's nonsense." 

"Nevertheless," said Father John, "his muse ran to 
the full length of seventeen stanzas." 

"And you stood there under the sun to listen to that 
rigmarole?" 

"I did not, but I might have, for all you cared." 

" 'Who loveth danger shall perish in it,' " quoted 
Father Moylan. 

"But how was I to know I would meet this song- 
maker during my walk?" asked Father John. 

"Well, next time you'll know better. Stay here with 
me and be sociable." 

Two months later the postboy brought Father John 
a rather bulky package. It contained Jim's ballet and 
this note: 

"Your Reverence: I thought may be I wouldn't see 
you again for some time and so I'm sending you the 
ballet which I hope you will read. When your rev- 
erence has finished reading it you may keep it as I have 
another copy by me." "Jim." 



XIX 

"GREEN GROWS THE RUSHES, O!" 

M ALLEN O'DAY had a vegetable garden at the 
side of Progue's Point where the sun came when 
the day was young. A white-thorn hedge grew 
around the garden that looked like a well groomed man, 
trimmed and all as it was by the diligent Mallen. Apple, 
cherry and peach trees had a big corner where they min- 
istered to one or other of the senses almost every season 
of the year, and away to the south goose-berry and cur- 
rant bushes bent their arched branches till they touched 
the ground. Early potatoes, turnips, carrots, white cab- 
bage and many other choice vegetables had little plots 
of their own set off from the rest of the growing world. 
So sacred these plots looked you would no more think 
of stepping on them with unsanctified feet than you 
would on the velvet carpet of the sanctuary. 

As you know, many a man who has a garden where 
sweet and precious things grow, has a heart that nour- 
ishes only thorns. What I mean is this: there are people 
who have a talent for adding a loveliness to the earth who 
are very unlovely themselves. Many a sweet song is 
sung by a sour poet. You will hear musicians calling 
rhapsodies out of their dream world who can be as pet- 
tish as spoiled children. The indulgent, adoring world 
calls all such bad manners the oddities of genius; conceit 
would be nearer the truth. 

Now Mallen O'Day was the artist of growing things. 
He painted his picture of green and yellow and white and 
gold and purple and red and framed it with a hedge. 

145 



146 Memory Sketches 

But, for all his skill as a gardener, his ways were kind 
and his heart patient; and for all the care he expended 
on what he grew, he was generous in parting with it. 
He gave potatoes to a beggar woman or a measure of 
gooseberries to a child as if he were receiving not be- 
stowing; and when Mary Cronan had typhoid many is 
the time he sent her a vase of roses with the dew of the 
night not yet gone out of them. He kept on the sunny 
side of the ditch all through life and never let a small- 
ness or a bitterness cast a shadow thereon. 

He had a stave of a song which came as an end to 
everything he said, like the ''Glory be" at the end of a 
decade. When he worked he hummed it, when he drove 
his donkey and cart to Banagee with his vegetables he 
whistled it, and when you tried to tell him anything mean 
or unlovely he threw back his head and sang it to the 
heavens. It was not much of a song, as songs go; the 
fact is, we might consider it a philosophy, a cheerful 
point of view, an outlook on life, rather than a song. 
When one dry sumrner the garden was brown and 
parched, Mallen stood at the green gate and sighed. 
The next instant he sang softly: 

''Green grows the rushes O, 
So does the bushes O, 
Green grows the rush-es O." 

On his way to the market of a Tuesday morning he 
met Jimeen Donovan back near Barnah bridge where 
the Deel is deep and solemn. It was raining, even as 
it had been for three days before. 

"By gor, there's ne'er a fine day now at all, however 
'tis," said Jimeen.- 

"There's as good fish in the say, Jimeen, as ever was 
caught. They're comin' man, they're comin'." 



''Green Groups the Rushes, OT 147 

"Yes, but we'll be under the ground whin they get 
here." 

''An' if we do itself, 'tis aequal. Under the ground 
we rest more aisy then over." Then to the little, black 
donkey, ''Get up, Jack, get up!" 

"Green grows the rushes O, 
So does the bushes O, 
Green grows the rush-es O." 

At the market he met Larry Condon. Said Larry: 

"They tell me Mick Hayes has broken the pledge 
again." 

"What pledge?" 

"Yeh, don't you know? The pledge the 'Holy 
Father' gave him at the mission." 

"An' how did he break it?" asked Mallen. 

"An' how did he break it!" echoed Larry. "Yeh. 
how indeed, but by takin' a sup whin he promised he 
wouldn't. An' 'tis a shame he did it, an' he after prom- 
isin' the 'Holy Father' he wouldn't touch or taste ale, 
porther, wine or strong liquors any more." 

"Wisha, faith, 'tis hard whin a man has a thirst." 

"That's a poor how-d'-ye-do, by gor, an' he with a 
wife and small childer." 

"Larry, every man has a waekness; an' if 'tisn't one 
thing, 'tis another." 

"That's all very good, but Mick Hayes should keep 
away from the fairs, 'cept when he's got a business, an' 
thin he should go home early." 

"Maybe he's tryin' hard, Larry. Let's be aisy on 
him." 



148 Memory Sketches 

"Ah, he's a waek sop, an' I can't be aisy on him." 
''Thin I hope God will," — 

''Green grows the rushes O, 
So does the bushes O, 
Green grows the rush-es O." 

'Tis many the summer afternoon Father John walked 
in among the roses and watched Mallen where he crept 
on one knee below the tall stalks weeding his 
"Flounders." Once, on Pathern Day, July twenty-fifth, 
he came in the morning. There was the bluest sky that 
ever the dear God unfurled over Ireland, and the gold 
of the sun softened the green of the trees; there was not 
the single whisper of wind, and the wide oak leaves lay 
still on the air like drowsy fish when their heads are set 
up stream. 

"The holy time is quiet as a nun 
Breathless with adoration," 

said Father John, who was always quoting poetry. 

Mallen came from under the potato stalks and lifted 
his hat in salutation. 

"Mallen," exclaimed Father John, with a grand ges- 
ture, "God never made this day for work; the land is full 
of dreams!" 

"Ay, Father John; ay, indeed. I've often thought so 
myself on days like this, though I haven't the words to 
say it like you." 

"I never hear a bee buzzing about a rose, or the white 
feet of a child half-hidden under the yellow sand, but I 
grow lonesome." 

"An' why. Father John?" asked Mallen, his grey 
eyes wide for wonder. 



''Green Grows the Rushes, OT 149 

''Because It makes me think of the young morning 
when all my day was ahead of me." 

''Faith, there's a good bit ahead o' you yet, Father 
John, plase God!" 

"Yes, Mallen," answered the priest with that sad 
tune his voice sometimes took, "but when we get beyond 
the noon hour the shadows lengthen and we begin to 
think of night and sleep." 

"Yeh, mornin' or evenin', 'tis aequal, Father John, — 

"Green grows the rushes O, 
So does the bushes O, 
Green grows the rush-es O." 

The priest smiled for a moment. Then he gave in- 
terpretation and enlargement to Mallen's verses. 

"Quite so, quite so. In joy or pain, youth or age, 
the rushes grow and wave In the wind's breath. The 
lilies have a glory, and the song birds worry not about 
setting or sowing. Why so much planning and schem- 
ing, so much looking fore and aft when a wise God Is 
directing all? 'Quid prodest?' The rushes grow, life 
progresses, not through us but through Him. We can 
not add a cubit to our stature wish we it ever so ardently. 
'Quid prodest!'" 

"I don't understand you entirely, Father John," 
Mallen observed when the priest had ceased. 

"Mallen, It doesn't matter much anyhow. Your 
gooseberries are nearly ripe, I see." 

"Ay. Three days of sun will bring thim." 

"Then you'll sell." g,^ 

"Some, Father John, ?sofhe. Others I give away to 
a friend here, an' a neighbor there." 



150 Memory Sketches 

''Mallen," said the priest looking at the old gardener 
with sympathy, '' 'tis good to be generous with our store. 
Often when we get much, we are misers in giving." 

"Father John, there'll be gooseberries growin' when 
I'm gone, an' strawberries an' currants an' apples an' 
plums." 

''Ay, Mallen, or in other words" — and Father John 
sang in the style of Mallen— 

''Green grows the rushes O, 
So does the bushes O, 
Green grows the rush-es O." 

"That's 'bout the iday, Father John," Mallen agreed 
quietly. 

T* ^ *** *** 

A warm summer day, four years later, a funeral pro- 
cession wound its solemn way over the hill road to 
Knockderrig churchyard. It was about four o'clock in 
the afternoon when the coffin was placed in the grave. 
Father John had finished the prayers at the foot of the 
upturned brown earth and the people began to move 
slowly away. 

"They're all goin'," said Johnny Mangan to Mick 
Danahar. They were standing outside the churchyard 
gate. 

"Yerra, they are, Johnny," agreed Mick dolefully. 
"An' Mallen wasn't an old man aither. Sixty-four, 
maybe." 

"Well, he won't thrim his garden any more, an' the 
flowers will miss him." 

"They will, they will," said Mick; "but I'm thinking 
he'll have a garden up in Heaven with roses and mari- 
golds an' a white-thorn hedge around thim." 



^' Green Grows the Rushes, Of' 151 

"Ay, an' he'll give thim around to the angels like he 
jsed to give thim to the sufferin' an' the sick here." 

''An' I spose'," added Mick, ''he'll jine in with thim 
when they sing." 

"No, Mick, he won't jine with thim; 'tis they will 
iine with him. 'Twill be, 

" 'Green grows the rushes O, 
So does the bushes O, 
Green grows the rush-es O.' " 



XX 

MISER'S HEAP. 

HALF-WAY between our townland and Creelabeg 
schoolhouse, if you go across the country, there 
is a great pile of stones called "Miser's Heap," 
in the middle of a sloping field. It resembles a lesser 
pyramid in its solemn ancientness, and sets one to dream- 
ing how it grew there. A water dyke runs down from the 
heap to a ravine at the end of the slope. 

Many a summer morning have large-eyed school 
children ^stood 'in the shadow of the great pile sur- 
mising that some giant must have collected all the large 
stones for the purpose of throwing them at his enemy. 
But for some reason the enemy had not appeared and 
the great heap of stones remained. That, of course, 
was before Tade Clancy gave us the true story of 
Miser's Heap the night of the bonfire. You must 
hear it. 

In mid- June of the late eighties, the Nationalists won 
a notable parliamentary victory. All over the country 
it was decided to celebrate the event with fitting cere- 
monies. Seven or eight of our townlands agreed to 
have a bonfire on a grand scale on the top of Miser's 
Heap. 

Promptly after school, the children of our section 
scurried in all directions to get fuel for the great blaze. 
One remembers the time quite distinctly across the long 
years. A blur of haze climbed up Ballyadan or hung 
still in the hollow places the quiet afternoon. Here 
and there sheep plucked the short grass or lay in uncon- 

152 



Miser's Heap 153 

cerned leisure chewing the cud. Noises came to one dis- 
tinctly — the bark of a dog, the whistle of a distant 
train, the laugh of a child or the call of a woman. 

Through the haze appeared the children from every 
direction bearing dead tree limbs, dry bushes and odd 
pieces of timber to serve as fuel for the fire. They 
looked as if they might be fairies coming together for 
festival. 

The night had well fallen when the last tree branch 
had been placed on the peak of Miser's Heap, and 
already scores of neighbors stood around the base of 
the pile. Someone put a match to the fuel and very 
shortly tongues of fire were leaping toward the sky 
while red sparks floated across the hazy night. 

"'Tis a great heap an' a great fire, boys," mused 
Tade Clancy, looking up at the sparks that shone and 
vanished. 

"Yeh, Tade, an' isn't It strange to have this pile o' 
stones standin' out here in the middle o' the field. My 
grandfather used to say that his grandfather remlmbers 
his grandfather talkin' about it." So declared Mike 
Hartigan. 

''Ay, an' many a grandfather's grandfather before 
him," Tade Clancy assured. 

'Tm wonderin' how it came here at all?" queried 
Jim Donnelly. 

'' 'TIs a strange way, thin, Jim ; very strange entirely." 

There was a silence of some minutes till Jim Don- 
nelly said again: 

*'Yeh, Tade, an' if you know what 'tis, why don't 
you tell, an' not be goln' on griggin' us." 

'Terra, who's griggin' you, Fd like to know?" 



154 Memory Sketches 

''Well, thin, tell us an' don't be goln' on," Jim 
insisted. 

''Faith, 'tis a short story enough, as stories go; an' 
if we sit down here on the soft grass under the blaze, 
I'll tell ye as I remember it." 

When the neighbors were all seated, Tade began: 

"There used to be the walls of an old house back 
there at the west side o' this field many years before 
the most o' ye were born. When I was a gorsoon, they 
pulled it down an' used the stones to make a wall around 
the new grave-yard at the other side o' Ballyadan. In 
that ould house there used to live, not in my day nor in 
your day, nor in the day of any man livin', an ould 
man, — Pogue Moga by name, — who owned most o' the 
land around here. He had flocks o' sheep an' herds 
o' cows roamin' about the fields, an' money flowed into 
him as fast as wather comes down Ballyadan in seven 
streams durin' early Spring. An' by this same token 
he was so close with it that a pinny had as much chance 
o' gettin' away from him as a man has o' gettin' out o' 
Spike Island. 

"An' he had a daughter" — 

"Yeh, they always do," interrupted Mike Ahern. 

"Who do?" asked Tade, his teeth coming together 
like pincers. 

"Yerra, all o' thim kind o' people that do be in 
stories." 

"Well," answered Tade solemnly, "an' isn't it aequal 
to you whether they do or no, only hould your tongue 
an' let a man go on." 

"Yeh, go on," protested the seemingly inoffensive 
Mike, "an' sure I'm not puttin' a sougawn across your 
path." 



Misers Heap ISS 

**The name o' this daughter was Cumah, an' she had 
tresses like sun-beams, an' cheeks like bog lilies, an' eyes 
as black as two ripe sloes. An' her face shone out o' 
her hood like a diamond out of a silk settin'." 

"By gor, she must have been great entirely," whis- 
pered Jim Donnelly across to Mike Madigan. 

"The Miser was rich beyond the draems of any livin' 
man, but the great trouble of his life was to find a safe 
place in w^hich to hide his money. An' as for his lovely 
daughter, she was like a caged bird, never goin' any 
place with the neighbors — to ne'er a dance, faest or 
pathern. Indeed he kep' as close a watch over his girl 
as he did over his money. 

"But where there's a will, there's a way, as they say. 
Anyhow, a boy, — Dermot Higgins by name, — lived near 
the house o' Pogue Moga an' his beautiful daughter. 
He was a likely lad an' very industrious, workin' his bit 
o' land with a happy heart an' a ready hand. Many's 
the time he saw the lovely cauleen walkin' in her garden 
listenin' to the song of a stray bird or pluckin' flowers 
that grew here an' there. One day Dermot met her at 
the gap laedin' into the garden, an' she smiled on him, 
an' her smile lifted up his heart. A second time whin 
they met he saluted an' she answered, an' as he wint away 
it seemed as if he could fly if he threw himself into the 
air. Well, for what's the use baetin' around the cover 
whin you know where the fox is — they met by stealth 
many times after that, an' so fell in love with each other. 
Thin they were married unbeknownst an' stole away 
from kith an' kin an' were never heard of afterw^ard, 
although I know they must have lived very happy 
together. 



156 Memory Sketches 

*'I needn't tell ye the burnin' anger an' storm an' 
rage o' Pogue Moga whin he found his beautiful daughter 
Cumah, that he loved most in all the world after his 
money, was gone away from him forever an' ever — as 
we say at the end o' the prayers. He tore his hair an' 
stamped his feet an' almost fell into a faint thin an' 
there." 

''But I'll ingage he didn't faint," broke in Paudtheen's 
Paddy, the half wit. 

''Yeh, an' why not, Paddy?" asked Mike Condon out 
of condescension. 

''Because," — and Paudtheen's Paddy grinned to twice 
his foolishness — "because they'd stael his money while 
he'd be faintin'." 

"There's truth in your foolishness, Paddy," said 
Tade, magnanimously. "An' so he didn't faint, although 
he almost fainted, as I said. An' in his anger he cried: 
'Dermot Higgins, you black thief, you've stolen my 
daughter with her will an' consint. Well, take her an' 
keep her for I never want to see her face any more. 
An' as for my money, naether she nor you, nor both o' 
ye will ever get a pinny of it. For Fll put it where no 
man will get it to the ind o' the world.' 

"So at twelve o'clock that night, whin every man, 
woman an' child was asleep, he came out here an' dug 
up a big hole, put his money into it, covered it up again 
an' put the sods o' grass back as naet an' natural as 
before, an' thin he told his workmin that he wanted a 
big heap o' stones brought together over the place where 
he buried his money, sayin' he was goin' to build a house 
there. An' so at his biddin' they raised up this great 
pile which ye see. 



Miser s Heap 157 

"Thin whin 'twas finished Pogue Moga raised his 
right hand to the sky. 'Dermot Higgins,' says he, 'an' 
you, Cumah, my daughter, ye will never come back to my 
house, nor to my land, naether will ye inherit my land 
or live in my house. An' ye won't spind a pound, a 
crown or a pinny o' my money. For my land is my land 
an' my house mine, an' my money is hidin' safe an' secure 
lor all time an' forever. Am.in.' 

"An' after three years an' three months an' three 
days, he tould his workmin to take away some o' the 
stones from the side o' the heap one dark night at twelve 
o'clock. Thin whin they had done so he sint thim away 
for the distance o' one mile, one furlong an' one foot. 
Thin he tould thim to start back to him again after 
three hours, three minutes an' three seconds from the 
time they left him. 

"That was well an' good, but whin the workmin came 
back at the time appointed they saw ne'er a sign o' Pogue 
Moga, the Miser. They stood outside the hole they 
had made in the side o' the heap, but no Pogue was 
about the place at all, at all. They called him, but ne'er 
an answer. 

"Thin one o' thim said, 

" 'Sure an' if Pogue don't come to us we'll try an' 
find him.' But the other said, Tm afeered.' TU laed,' 
says the first one, 'an' d' ye follow me.' 

"So gettin' a candle they entered the openin' at the 
side o' the heap ; an' they didn't go far when they saw 
a hole in the ground an' big baems o' wood above it 
holdin' up the pile o' stones. Thin they saw a tunnel 
runnin' under the field to the ravine over there where 
it came out to the open in such a way you wouldn't sus- 
pect there was a tunnel there at all, at all. At the bottom 



158 Memory Sketches 

o' the hole was Pogue Moga dead an' cowld as the stones 
o' the heap." 

"An' 1 supose he was lyin' over his money," sug- 
gested Jim Donnelly. 

''He wasn't thin, Jim, he wasn't," answered Tade 
acidly. ''An' why, because I'll tell you. 'Twas because 
the money was stolen through the tunnel, the remains o' 
which is, as ye can see, the dyke." 

So it appeared. The dyke went from the stone pile 
to the ravine at the end of the field. We had often 
wondered how it came to be there. That night it was 
partially filled with water from recent rains. Now it 
took on a new meaning and gave us a new interest, 
solemn and still as it looked under the light of the dying 
bonfire. 

"Yerra, an' Tade, won't you tell us who stole the 
money?" asked Paudtheen's Paddy. 

"I won't thin; for an' if I tould ye that, ye'd be 
askin' me how the thieves spint it. Yes, ye would, so 
ye would." 

Tade told the story to Father John one day when the 
priest was going down the hill country. 

"The dreams of a dreaming race!" was our dear 
priest's only comment at the end of the tale. 



XXT. 
THE LUCK OF MICKY MACK. 

ALL the long morning the rain came In a gray slant 
from Sheehys' fox-cover down the high field to 
the white thorn hedge. 

''I can't go today, I'm afraid," mused Micky Mack, 
as he looked across the fields and up at the sombre sky. 

''WIsha, you can wait a day an' not mind it," com- 
mented his thrifty wife as she anchored a pan of bread 
safely over the fire. 

"But I promised Tim Donovan I'd meet him, an' I 
never like to disappoint a man." 

''Promises are made to be broken," said Mrs. Mack, 
sententiously. ''An' besides, whin you can't, you can't, 
an' that's all there's about it." 

Yet the more Micky reflected, the more dissatisfied 
he became. "After all," he thought, "I promised Tim 
I'd meet him at Madigans', an' If he's there an' don't 
find me, just for a sprinklin' o' rain, he'll think 'tis 
quare." 

Tim Donovan was a horse-dealer up near Balllngarry, 
who began a pony trade with Micky some months before 
at the fair of Creelabeg. The deal was not completed 
and the two men continued negotiations whenever and 
wherever they met afterwards. The matter remained, 
as Father John would say, in statu quo until Donovan 
proposed that Micky meet him In Madlgans' the day 
after All Souls'. 

At two o'clock, just as Micky had made up his mind 
to face the weather, the rain came down in great sheets, 

159 



160 Memory Sketches 

He called to his wife from where be leaned on the half- 
door, 

"Mary, maybe I'd better not go after all." 

"Yeh, of course. Since the day is what it is, an' since 
you can't work out in the garden, sure you might fix the 
cow-house where the rain's comin' in below the wall." 

"By gor, woman, I believe you're right, an' 'tis what 
I'll do." 

In less time than it takes to tell it, he was under the 
wall of the cow-house where previous rains had washed 
out a great gap below the mortar and stones. He worked 
for an hour shovelling up the earth to make way for the 
foundation. At three o'clock the skies cleared some- 
what and the downpour became a drizzle. Perhaps 
Micky felt regret at disappointing his friend; perhaps 
he wanted a few hours of rest after the late Autumn work 
of the potato picking; perhaps he was not in the mood 
for wall fixing. Anyhow, he threw down his tools, 
climbed out of the pit and walked to the house. 

"I'm goin'," he announced to his wife. 

"Wisha, why don't you finish what you began like 
any sensible man would do." 

"No, I'm goin' an' that's all about it." 

"All right, go if you want to, but don't say I didn't 
tell you." 

Half an hour later Micky Mack made his way 
through the high field. The rain drops hung heavy on 
the long spears of grass that drooped over the path and 
wet Micky's shoes and trousers' legs. He was very un- 
comfortable and half wished he had kept on with his 
work. To add to his annoyance, the rain began again. 
He reached the main road from Athery to Creelabeg and 
walked briskly enough to the south. He stepped into 



The Luck of Micky Mack 161 

Hannon's forge to get a little light and warmth from the 
blazing fire. 

"By gor, 'tis a bad day to be out, Micky," came the 
greeting from Jack Hannon, while he rounded a hot bar 
of iron into horseshoe shape. 

" 'Tis; but whin a man has to be out, he has to." 

*'Wisha, thin," interposed Tom Danahar, the jour- 
neyman, "'tis a big business entirely would keep me out 
of a day like this." 

"But my business is big business," retorted Micky. 

"Yeh, Micky, what big business can you have I'd like 
to know, to keep you out in the teemin' rain?" Danahar's 
irony cut Micky like a knife. 

"Faix, 'tis your death o' cowld you'll be gettin', you 
an' your big business!" Hannon cautioned him. 

"Faith, 'tis so indeed, an' maybe stretched out you'll 
be stiff and still an' all of us wakin' you," added his 
journeyman. 

"The divil mind ye ! — God forgive me ! — ye two com- 
forters of Job," snapped Micky as he left the forge. 

The rain, wind driven, now poured down till the 
bubbles fairly danced on the hollow places where the 
water had collected. 

"Maybe 'twould be better an' if I'd turn back," mused 
the farmer. Then he remembered \the irony of the 
blacksmith and his journeyman. 

"Divil a f<oot!" he muttered, as with head bent low he 
made his way anew against rain and wind. 

Up at Grageen, Mage Hoggins — Jimeen Hjggin's 
wife — called out from behind her half-door: 

"Yerra, Micky, an' is it out o 'your mind you're 
gettin', to be walkin' in the weather a day like this." 



162 Memory Sketches 

"Mage, 'tis a long tongue you have, an' if you'd keep 
It between your teeth 'tis less harm 'twould do, so 'tis." 

"Wisha, Micky, you poor anashore of a craether, an' 
why don't you come in out o' the rain? An' what kind 
of a wife have you at all to let you out?" 

Micky was already on his way and did not hear to 
the full the delicate blending of pity and irony. At 
Meehan's corner, where Newbridge dyke runs under a 
small bridge of a single span through marsh lands to the 
river Deel, Micky met Dick Noonan, the postboy, on his 
way to Athery. 

''Yeh, Micky, 'tis fond of the rain you are to be out 
under it." 

''An' what about you, Dick?" 

''O faith, 'tis I that must be out rain or shine; otherwise 
'tis sittin' on the hob by the fire I'd be, havin' a smoke 
for myself." 

''Every man for himself an' God for us all," an- 
swered Micky briskly. 

"Indeed thin, you need Him, Micky, an' you out by 
yourself a day like today." 

He met the Ardee station master hurrying down 
Pound Lane just as he was entering the town. 

"Micky, you must be fond of the fresh air to be 
fighting the weather." 

"A man must be out sometimes," murmured Micky. 

"Sickness in the family, and after a doctor, I sup- 
pose?" 

"No thin." 

"Some great reason must be in your head anyhow, to 
be out." 

"Every man has a raison of his own." 



The Luck of Micky Mack 163 

"Ay, and a mind of his own, too, Micky — whatever 
kind of a mind it may be." 

As Micky walked down the stree]:Jt seemed as if all 
life had gone out of the town. There were no donkeys 
in the courthouse square, no women, their heads covered 
with plaid shawls, entering or leaving the shops, no 
ballad singers, singing the glories of some fallen White- 
boy! All about was rain, mud and flowing gutters; and 
above — sombre, low clouds. Shopkeepers in snug leisure 
behind their windows looked out pittyingly at Micky's 
bent body making headway against the wind. 

"The anashore of a man," they seemed to say, '*an' 
why don't he stay at home by his fire?" 

Micky saw their pity — that helped to make him feel 
he was a half-witted poor creature who needed someone 
to take care of him. 

"An' If I have come so far," he muttered In pride of 
resolution, "I'll go every foot of It now to spite thim." 

Five minutes later he was In Madlgans' bakery and 
flour shop. The odor of baking bread came to his senses 
pleasantly. 

"Step back from the sacks, Micky my man, an' don't 
drown the flour," said John Madigan by way of greeting. 

"I can go out an' wait in the street for fear I might 
burn the house," snapped Micky. 

" 'Tis more like you could put out a blaze, Micky," 
Madigan replied, laughing at his own gift of repartee. In 
which he was joined by his wife and two daughters. 

"Is Tim Donovan here with ye?" asked the farmer. 

"What would he be doin' here In weather like we're 
havin'?" 

"If he's here ye might as well say so an' quit sparrin'," 



164 Memory Sketches 

''Well, he Isn't thin, nor is he likely to be," Madigan 
answered. 

''By gor, he said he'd be here at four o'clock, an 'tis 
well beyant five now." 

"But what man would keep his word In a teemin' 
rain?" asked Mrs. Madigan looking at Micky. 

"But an' didn't I?" 

"Yeh, that's so. Indeed." Then John Madigan finished 
his thought in a confidential whisper. "But sure they say, 
Micky, that you be a little quare like." 

"WIsha the devil mind you! — an' what d' you mane?" 

" 'Tis aequal, Micky, 'tis aequal. But at any rate 'tis 
a bad day to be out an' a good day to be in." Donovan 
laughed softly at Micky's Ire. 

"An' for all I declare to you, John Madigan," Micky 
proclaimed, "that a man's word Is a man's word," 

"'Tis thin," answered Madigan; "but for all that a 
man's word won't keep your back warm an' your shins 
dry." 

It was half-past six when Micky left the bakery. Tim 
Donovan had broken his plighted word and Micky had 
lost faith In the stability of human things. He was damp 
and chill; the dark had already fallen and the beat of the 
rain was all along the road. Through the windows of 
roadside houses he could see people sitting amid heat and 
comfort. Down at Hartlgan's, a mile out from the town, 
he caught the odor of frying bacon that quickened his 
appetite. His wet clothes clung to his chill body and the 
water oozed through his shoe laces. At Cronans', Miss 
Kate played the piano below the oil lamp while her mother 
lifted a steaming tea-kettle from the blazing turf fire. By 
contrast the rain from Micky's hat poured down his neck 
and back. A side-car swept past, its occupants warm and 



The Luck of Micky Mack 165 

dry under their rugs and rain coats, and flung the white 
mud of the road on his wet clothes. At the forge the 
fire was out and the two black-smiths were gone home. 
Micky Mack was glad of that; he would escape their 
gibes. In twenty minutes more, from the hill below Don- 
nellys', he sees from the edge of the fox-cover across the 
high field, the light of home. He has the picture of the 
greeting when he returns. 

''WIsha, you poor anashore, you fool of a man, to 
spend your day in the rain an' come in here this night like 
an empty sack drawn out of the river!" Then the irony 
when he announces that Donovan didn't meet him after 
all, and the trip to Creelabeg was made in vain! 

'Well," mused Micky as he trudged along, '' 'twill be 
all over in a hundred years — if I don't take the pneu- 
money an' die." 

A few minutes later he walks through the yard to the 
front of the house. The kitchen door is open, and Micky 
follows a pathway of light. 

''Thank God, 'tis you !" — ejaculates his wife. 

"Manin' what?" asks Micky in awe. 

— "An' not your coffin," the woman finishes. 

"Yerra, what is it?" queries the bewildered man. 

" 'Tis everything, entirely," she answers vaguely. 

"Glory be to God!" 

"You may as well say so, an' several times." 

"Well, 'tis meself anyhow an' not me coffin. An' I'm 
alive an' won't need the coffin unless I get the pneumoney. 
An' as for me goin', a man's word is his word no matter 
what you say." 

"O thank God you wint, me poor man!" 

"YeH but," Micky ventured anxiously, "the devil a 
bit o' Tim came at all, at all." 



166 Memory Sketches 

''Yerra, don't mind about Tim so long as you're here 
an' alive." 

"Well, an' what is it you mane, woman?" 

''What is it I mane? I'll tell you what I mane if you 
come in out o' the wet." 

''Well?" asked Micky shaking the rain off his hat. 

Mrs. Mack leaned on the kitchen table for support 
as she declared: "Half an hour after you left me, an' I 
thinkin' I was married to a boudthaun, didn't the side o' 
the cowhouse fall into the pit where you were workin' ; 
an' if you weren't on the high road to Creelabeg, 'tis stiff 
an' cowld you'd be lyin' under the mortar an' stones this 
day." 

"O faith, I said I'd go, an' a man's word is a man's 
word," declared Micky with spirit. 

"Well, whether 'tis or no, they aren't wakin' you this 
night anyhow." 

"An' they won't — if I don't get the pneumoney." 

"Yeh, hurry back to the room an' change," commanded 
the solicitous wife. 

"I will, I will. But — but you're not married to a 
boudthaun as you were thinkin'," Micky reminded her 
with severity. 

"No ; at least not for the present." 



XXII. 
THE GHOST 

IT was mid-December, the wind wailing out among the 
haggard trees. As the Condons had a warm fire and 
a big kitchen, the neighbors went there every night as 
to a congenial place to meet and mingle. An agreeable 
family they were, never showing resentment that their 
home was thus robbed of quiet and privacy. Jim Condon 
himself had that way of welcoming every man, woman or 
child, you felt the house was yours once you stood on the 
gravel floor. , 

The older men began to tell ghost stories that Decem- 
ber night till the hush of the preternatural fell upon the 
house, and every voice sank to a whisper. 

''Do' ye remember Ned Hallinan at th' other side o' 
Progue's Point?" Dan Sheahan asked as Mrs. Condon 
added a fresh sod to the fire. Yes, everybody remem- 
bered Ned. He died of typhoid fever five years before. 

'Well, the night Ned was waked 'twas like the Egyp- 
tian darkness with ne'er a sign o' moon or stars all over 
the sky. We had been smokin' a bit an' tellin' a yarn now 
an' thin out in the kitchen, an' the women were in the 
room sayin' the baeds. I was tired an' sleepy myself, an' 
besides the next day I had to drive to Clounana to buy a 
rick o' turf to keep me in firin' for the rest o' the winter. 
So I left the kitchen 'bout 'leven o'clock, an' on my way 
out T could look Into the room where Ned was lyin' so 
still an' white upon the bed. An' while I was lookin' at 
him on my way out It seemed he beckoned to me with 

167 



168 Memory Sketches 

his head, like as if he wanted me to go in an' spaek to 
him."— 

"Glory be to God!" ejaculated Jack Dempsey. 

"Faix, 'twas strange, so 'twas," observed Jack Hogan. 

**An' did you go in, Dan?" asked Tim Clancy. 

'Teh no, thin ; for I thought 'twas my feelin' an' not 
my seein', an' so I kept on my way. An' as I walked out 
across the yard an' down the boreen over the rush bog, all 
the time I was thinkin' o' Ned an' his thin hands an' his 
white face. I walked slow like, for the night was dark 
as I said; an' whin I was over at the other side o' the 
bog I heard a step on the boreen. My heart almost stood 
still for the fright of it but after a minute I took courage 
an' said to myself: 'Sure what's the use o' raisin' a hew 
an' cry an' hullabullu, for if 'tis nothin' 'tis nothin', an' 
if 'tis somethin', 'tis better pretend nothin' an' act like I 
didn't notice it at all.' " 

"By gor, Dan, you did the best thing I'm thinkin', 
whatever 'tis," commended Jim Donnelly. 

"I began to reason with myself," continued Dan, "that 
after all it might be nothin' but a stone slippin' down the 
side o' the hill. Because, as ye know. Father John is 
always tellin' us not to be superstitious. So I walked on 
makin' no remark yes, ay, or no of any kind. Sure I 
hadn't gone six feet whin I heard the steps behind me 
comin' again. Thin I looked back, the cowld sweat stand- 
in' on me forehead like dew on the clover. *By gob' says 
I * 'tis somethin'.' An' as luck would have it, so it was. 
For about forty yards back o' me — or may be fifty, — for 
fear o' tellin' a lie — I sees somethin' white through the 
pitch dark. 'Praise be to the Lord God!' says I to myself, 
*may be 'tis Ned comin' after me, seein' as I did not go to 
him when he called me.' " 



The Ghost 169 

'*By gor, Dan, 'tis a wonder you lived at all, man," 
Tim Clancy interrupted. 

"I stood like I was froze to the ground, an' it — or he, 
or whoever 'twas — seemed to stand too. After a while 
I began to walk again, an' sure didn't it walk straight 
after me. 'Blessed be the Lord God this night!' said I 
under me breath. I fell into an aisy run somethin' like a 
throt, an' sure didn't it run too ! I stopped again an' 
looked around by way o' no harm. The very same min- 
ute It stood still, not comin' a foot nearer. 

"Thin, all afeered, I ran like the divll was at me heels 
down along the boreen by the edge o' the bog, an' sure 
I hadn't gone a yard whin it came after me like another 
divil was behind it." 

"Ay," murmured Mick Ahern emitting a whiff of 
tobacco smoke, his eyes half-closed In mute contempla- 
tion. 

''By gor, Dan 'twas terribly strange," said Tim Clancy 
from his place next the hob. 

A dismal rain blew down from the Ballyadan hills that 
tapped vigorously on the windows and back-door; and 
around the northwest corner of the house came the high- 
pitched whistle of the wind. The ominous bark of the 
black-and-white shepherd dog arose high above all other 
noises of the night. " 'Tis a wonder you're alive at all, 
Dan!" Jim Donnelly exclaimed in admiration. 

"Yeh, by gor, 'tis strange to me you didn't fall down 
an' die right thin and there." Mike Noonan relighted his 
pipe after having repeated Jim's thought. 

"Well, I lived somehow, though how I lived is more 
than I can say. But to make a long story short, whin I 
ran, it ran, an' whin I walked it walked, an' whin I stood 
it stood. An' by gor, it remained the same distance 



170 Memory Sketches 

behind me, not comin' or goin' a foot nearer or farther. 
An' always it kep' lookin' the same white figure shinin' 
out o' the darkness." 

"Was it tall at all?" asked Tim Clancy in rime. 

''I wouldn't say for sure, but Fm thinkin' 'twas six 
or seven feet may be." 

"Did it spake e'er a word?" Mick Ahern looked 
solemnly at Dan while putting his question. 

"Ne'er a single word." 

"Did it look like Ned Hallinan, the man they were 
wakin'?" persisted Tim Clancy. 

"Yerra, sure man, I couldn't see the face of it," an- 
swered Dan somewhat impatiently. "All I could make out 
was the figure in white. Whin I reached Bannons' Dike, 
where it runs into the bog, I stood still. 'Tis twenty feet 
across or may be more, as ye know. 'By gor,' says I to 
myself Til lep it if I have to die for it this night.' Well, 
I walked back 'bout twinty feet, took a big breath, ran 
at it — an' leped it." 

"You did!" exclaimed several. Dan answered defi- 
antly : "I did ; every foot of it, I did. An' thin I kep' on 
runnin' to the north thinkin' may be, I'd escape the sight 
of it. But sure didn't it take a run an' lep it — yes 
every foot of it. I thought the breath would go out o' 
my body, I was that waek and faeverish. I was now 'bout 
a quarter a mile from home, whin all at once, of a sudden 
like, it began to gain on me. 'Hould up your head, 
.Dan, an' be a man an' don't die,' says I to myself 
as it kep' gainin' on me. My head was fallin' from side 
to side like an ear of oats in the wind of a wet day. 
Whin I was fifty feet from the gate laedin' into the yard 
I fell over an' fainted like I was dead." 

"Glory be to God!" piously ejaculated Mrs. Condon. 



The Ghost 171 

"Yeh, just like I was dead, though o' course I wasn't." 

'M'U ingage you weren't," Mike Ahern said ironically. 

Dan ignored the interruption and continued: "I lay 
there for three minutes — or more may be, for fear o' 
tellin' a lie — whin I woke an' came back to myself. An' 
whin I did, there it was standin' about ten yards away. 
Thin I began to crawl on my hands an' feet for full fifty 
yards, an' it moved very slowly after me. I opened the 
gate very soft like an' slipped through. Thin I closed 
it an' looked back. I could see over the gate the white 
figure standin' still an' straight. I heard Mooney's dog, 
an' that gave me courage. So I up an' says, 'Yeh, Ned, 
is it anythin' you want? Sure an' if 'tis, spake to me and 
I'll get it!' Divil a word yes, ay or no I got at all, at all. 
So I said again: 'Yeh, Ned, an' why don't you answer?' 
Ne'er a word or a sign of any kind. I got bolder, bint 
down an' looked through the bars o' the gate. Thin I 
could see the figure comin' to me aisy like, sv/ayin' from 
side to side. An', by gor, the breath nearly wint out o' 
me whin I saw there in front o' me Harrington's ould 
white horse, with ribs on him like rafters holdin' up a 
slate roof." 

''So, 'twasn't Ned after all," Jim Donnelly commented 
in evident disappointment. 

"No, Jim, much to my joy, 'twasn't." 

"Wisha faith, Dan, 'tisn't much you have to do spind- 
in' the night yarnin' about yourself an' Harrington's 
horse," Tim Clancy flung in by way of reproof. 

" 'Tisn't thin," assented Mick Ahern. 

"Anyhow, I had courage," protested Dan in defense. 

"You had, 'specially afther closin' the gate between 
yourself and the oul' horse." Jack Hogan's sarcasm was 
unmistakable. 



172 Memory Sketches 

'' 'Tis aequal, boys,. 'tis aequal. I found out the truth 
anyhow. An' if I hadn't 'tis about the ghost o' Ned 
Hallinan I'd be tellin' ye this night." 

''So much the better, Dan. Since you wint from sweat 
to faever an' from faever to trimblin', an' from trimblin' 
to faintin', you might just as well have seen Ned an' be 
done with it," Mick Ahern remarked. 

"By gor, that's right," agreed John Dempsey, who 
seldom spoke. '' 'Tis like you'd be all fixed to have your 
tooth pulled, an' all at once they'd stop before they 
began." 

''Ay so, indeed," agreed Jim Donnelly nodding 
thoughtfully. " 'Tis like you'd be goin' to jump into the 
cowld water, an' all at once you'd change your mind." 

"Well, thin, to plase ye," retorted Dan somewhat 
testily, "next time I see Harrington's horse 111 say he's 
a ghost." 

"Wisha faith you might as well, seein' you had so 
much sweatin' an' runnin' an' faintin' an' goin' on about 
it." Mrs. Condon folded her knitting very carefully, there- 
by giving a quiet hint for the men to break up the mystic 
circle. 



XXIII. 
KATE. 

KATE was Moll's sister; and Moll was married to 
Fergus O'Dea, the weaver of Newbridge. Kate 
was unmarried at forty and conducted a dressmak- 
ing shop up at Creelabeg, where Pound Lane crosses 
Church street. I should have told you in the first place 
that Kate's second name was Healy, only this has no im- 
portance whatever, since Kate's second name was never 
used except on envelopes coming through the post. She 
was a personage, like Victoria or Ann. 

The important thought is that Kate was single at 
forty because she wished it; that she allow^ed at least 
seven ships sail out to the troublous sea of matrimony 
because she refused an invitation to go aboard. 

''Tell me, Kate," said Father John, ''is it so that you 
missed Johnny Delaney by a foot?" 

Kate learned her trade in Dublin and came back with 
a Dublin accent which one never attempts to reproduce. 

"What do you mean. Father John?" Kate was bast- 
ing and stopped short as if taken with a stitch under her 
heart. 

"I mean what I mean, no more, no less," the priest 
answered. 

"Falx, you must be meaning in Latin, Father John, 
for I don't understand." 

"Well, you know what a foot is," said the priest. 

"I do. Indeed. 'TIs a third of a yard." 

"Quite so. And you missed Johnny Delaney by a 
third of a yard." 

173 



^^4 Memory Sketches 

"And how, your reverence?" 

"Well, if I must, Kate, I must. Johnny was going 
to marry you once upon a time. But just when the time 
came he changed his mind." 

''Father John — and begging your pardon — ^but if the 
busybody who told you that would only turn around and 
tell you the right of it, you wouldn't need to spend time 
sparring to get me off my guard. But since you're so 
anxious, I'll tell you." 

'Tm not anxious at all, Kate; I just made a remark." 

''A remark, is it?" Kate tilted her head and held her 
arms akimbo. '' 'Tisn't a rem.ark at all, Father John. 
'Tis missing the mark, it is." 

''O yes, joke about it now, so you'll forget to tell me." 

"F'm not joking and I'm not going to forget to tell 
you either. Father John." And Kate began. 

"When Johnny Delaney was going to ask me" — 

"Was going — how do you know he was going?" in- 
terrupted Father John. 

" 'Tisn't like 'twas the second bell for the last Mass; 
and so if your reverence will wait, I'll tell you." 

"Beg your pardon," exclaimed the priest humbly. 

"Pardon granted," Kate answered grandly. 

"When Johnny Delaney was going to ask me, I said 
to him, 'I really haven't thought about it;' 'Naether have 
I,' said he. 'And besides, Johnny,' I told him, 'I couldn't 
think of it just now.' 'All right, by gob,' he said. ' 'Tis 
six o' one and half a dozen o' the other.' With that he 
set sail for America." 

"Broken hearted?" suggested Father John. 

" No, heart broken," Kate answered. 

"Always," concluded the priest, "on the assumption 
that the premises are correct." 



Kat9 175 

''Indeed, 'tis well your reverence knows I always 
keep my premises correct." 

In late July, Mike Madigan met Kate at the pathern 
of Newbridge. 

"Miss Kate, they say Mikeen Ahern is askin' Jamsie 
Hallinan to make the match for him." 

''They say — and who is they?" 

''O Tom, Dick an' Harry an', an' — everybody." 

''Well, tell Tom, Dick, Harry and everybody and 
yourself too, Jim, that Miss Kate wants no go-betweens. 
The man she chooses, she chooses and that settles it. 
And tell them, besides, that she'll keep on waiting as long 
as she likes, till the right man comes." 

"He's a long time comin', by gor, like Timeen Dono- 
van's donkey," murmured Mike. 

"Well, when he comes, he'll be all the more welcome." 

"If he ever does." 

"Or If he never does." 

"Well, anyhow," said Mike, leaning on the other foot, 
*'some people are entirely too particular." 

"Particular people can afford to be particular." 

"O of course, that's right and proper enough so far 
as it goes." 

"And besides, Mike, proper nouns shouldn't be 
treated like common nouns." 

"I know; but all the same an' the common nouns like 
to be traeted, too," Mike grinned. 

"Mike, instead of a treat, 'tis the pledge you ought to 
be taking as I'll tell Father John when I see him." 

"Yeh, don't do that, Kate, an' I'll take the pledge 
whin you get married." 

"No, Mike; instead you take it till I find a man." 

"O faith, no. That would be takin' it for life." 



176 Memory Sketches 

The next moment Mike was lost in the crowd. 

Kate's shop at the crossing of Pound Lane and Church 
Street was tidy and prim, like Kate herself. A fire- 
place, always bright with the glow of a turf fire, made 
the work room cozy and inviting when the wind moaned 
insistently from the Ballydan hills. 

Dear Father John called in there many a time to 
lift the pain out of his heart when a sense of lonesome- 
ness oppressed him. For somehow, Kate kept the sum- 
mer there when the rain beat mournfully on the hard 
flags of the side path, and her talk came as a fresh 
breath of the sea up the Deel from Athery. 

It was late November when Father John laid away 
young Mrs. Ryan in the new earth of the graveyard back 
of Creelabeg Chapel. She left a young husband and 
seven children — the eldest a girl of sixteen. It was a 
typical South-Ireland November day. The wind sobbed 
fitfully through the bare limbs of the ancient oaks and 
dead ivy leaves fell to the ground where they nestled in 
the long grass below the high wall. 

Father John stood above the grave and recited those 
great, ancient prayers of the Ritual. The wind gusts 
wailed the responses and the rain hysopped the yellow 
cofiin. 

After the funeral, the priest called to see Kate. 

"You shouldn't be out in the wet. Father John," she 
admonished, after the priest crossed the threshold. 

"That's just my reason for coming in, Kate." 

"That's true, indeed, as a woman of my understand- 
ing should know." 

Then in a serious tone, "'Twas sad about poor Mrs. 
Ryan, wasn't it. Father John?" 



Kate Ml 

"" 'Twas, Kate — but she's better oft. The children 
are the big question now." 

'*If there's anything I can do to help, Father John, 
let me know. I have no one depending on me and I'm 
very willing to lend a hand." 

The priest felt relieved. 

''Since you are so good, Kate, the thought comes to 
me that maybe you could take the eldest girl in with you 
to learn dressmaking, so she could help a little later on.'' 

''Father John, let her come when she's ready. What 
you say is what I say." 

Later on two younger sisters were also given places 
and Kate's shop became a sort of training school. 

"By gor, Kate, you must be thrivin' with all the new 
girls you're gettin'," Jim Donnelly hinted one morning. 

"We always find work for willing hands," Kate ans- 
wered sharply. 

"An' they're likeable girls," Jim whispered as he 
walked over to the table where the girls worked. 

"How many are they, Kate?" 

"Count them to occupy your mind." 

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Faix, 
Kate, 'tis lots o' dresses you're makin'." 

"O we do other work, Jim." 

"Yeh, an' what, Kate?" asked Jim, his curiosity 
sharpened. 

"Linings for coffins and shrouds for the dead." 

"O murther! Fm goin'." 

"Wait, Jim, and Fll take your measure for a lovely 
shroud." 

"Let me out, woman, let me out!" 

" 'Twill fit you like the habit on the statue of St. 
Brigid." 



^78 Memory Sketches 

''Are you takin' laeve o' your senses? Sure, I'm only 
thirty-one years an' three days." 

"Yes, Jim, but we might be rushed the night you go." 

''Let me out, woman, or 'tis dead you'll have me before 
I laeve." 

"And besides, Jim, they're cheap now and I'll give 
you the benefit of the discount." 

"Holy Mary, Mother o' God, deliver me from this 
woman!" 

"And you'll know what you're getting; but when 
you're stiff and cold you won't know at all." 

"Let me out, Kate; for the love o' the twelve Apos- 
tles, let me out! I believe you'd man-slaughter me for 
the sake o' sellin' me a shroud." 

The nuns had a bazaar in the Spring of the year, and 
Paudtheen's Paddy called in to ask Kate to make him 
something for the raffle. 

"Yes, I'll make something for you, Paddy dear." 

"An' what. Miss Kate?" asked the youngster with 
wide eyes. 

"A cap — a dunce's cap, Paddy. And there'll be two 
peaks to it, so they won't know which way you're 
looking." 

"Be sure, an' Miss Kate, they'll be callin' me gommol 
worse than ever thin." 

"Let them. And if you're the gommol they say you 
are, 'twill suit you; and if you aren't, it won't. And then 
you can give it to some other gommol — for there are 
plenty of them." 

Mary Donovan from back near the mountains called 
to fit on a skirt which was still in the making. 

"Mary," asked Kate pointing through the shop win- 
dow to a large, lumbering man at the other side of the 



Kate 179 

street, "isn't that Simple Tom from back near your 
place?" 

*'No, Miss Kate," answered Mary with .deference; 
''that's not the one; that's his brother." 

"Simple Tom's brother?" 

"Yes, Miss." 

"Faith, by the looks of him he didn't escape very 
much from being Simple Tom also," mused Kate. 

"An' why do they call him Simple Tom, Miss Kate?" 
asked Paudtheen's Paddy. 

"Because he can read backwards, you gommol," she 
answered. 

"By gor, I wouldn't ever have knowed it, Miss Kate, 
only for you." 

Dick Fitz came in with a sack of potatoes all sweet 
with the smell of the country. 

"TEey're large an' maely, Kate. Will you take thim 
at six puntz a stone?" 
1 won t. 

"Will you take them at fi' puntz?" 

"I will." 

"By gor, Kate," said Dick reflectively, "I know now 
why you never married." 

"An' why, Dick?" 

" 'Tis the will an' the won't o' you. An' with your 
goin' on you laeve a man like a calf at a cross roads not 
knowin' which way to go." 

" 'Tis well put, Dick, for a man of your small 
learning." 

"Ah, thin falx, I may know more than you think, 
Miss Kate." 



180 Memory Sketches 

''Faith, maybe so, Dick. I suppose if you were close 
up so you could see, you could spell a capital H on the 
side of a sack." 

"Spaekin' of sacks. Miss Kate, will I laeve it?" 
pointing to his sack of potatoes. 

Kate nodded. 

''Thank you. I hope the right man comes." 

"At all events, the right man is going." 

* * >i« * 

Now all this comes to one this November day when 
the rain is blown across the vacant fields where awhile 
ago corn shocks stood like Indian wigwams. It is good 
to have gracious memories from the bright hours of the 
young day to sweeten the bitterness of the growing old; 
dreams of happy summers for winters when the dark 
gathers soon. 

God bless all the neighbors! They come to me now 
laden with dear dreams. And God be good to Kate 
living or among the dead! If living, may age still find 
the mirth of youth in her heart. If among the dear 
dead, may she rest very peacefully under the brown 
earth of Creelabeg graveyard, where so many of the 
neighbors are already at rest. 



XXIV. 
THE LAST PAGE. 

NO day goes by but the memory of him comes to me 
many, many times. His quiet manner, his unpre- 
tentious goodness, his patriotism, his vision and 
poetic Imagining, return to me again and again from over 
seas and over years. The thought of him keeps greener 
than any other, just like the fairy ring In the middle of the 
field. His dreams were among the stars, but his affec- 
tions were close to the daisies where the plain people 
walk. 

Dear Father John! He was taken from us after 
ten years of gentle ministering and sent to Pallas where 
the Shannon widens on Its journey to the West. Plenti- 
ful hayfields and ancient trees surround the quiet town. 
Down there, during the brief years after he left us, the 
dear priest must have often journeyed over an unfre- 
quented road to where the river lay as flat as the 
meadows beside It. He must have watched thoughtfully 
the brooding waters as they moved stealthily to the await- 
ing sea. 

Not far from the river — in Pallas chapel-yard — the 
grass grows green above him now. I have stood over 
the grave In the shadow of a protecting oak and thought 
of the lovely years that had been and that could not be 
now any more. Father John was away from us resting 
in holy earth; and many, many of the quiet people one 
remembers are no more in Creelabeg. God rest Father 
John! God rest all those dear loved ones wherever 
they lie! All that has been Is no longer. The memory 
alone keeps. 

181 



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